


Trollish Layer

by mitspeiler



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angelic Layer - Freeform, Anime, Comedy, Deconstruction, Gen, I got it, If you liked Angelic Layer you'll hate this, It's like Baka and Test, Reconstruction, fuck it, kind of an homage to Agelic Layer, more like Custom Robo now I think about it, okay, power of friendship and all that, tournament
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where everyone has a robotic troll companion, one boy does not get the troll he wants.  The two of them need to learn to live with each other and probably become champions of the city-wide troll-fighting tournament, or something. Something of a backhanded homage to fighting tournament anime, particularly, that's right, DBZ.  I mean, Angelic Layer.  not enough to count as a crossover though.  No, really, it's good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trollish Layer I

            With a hiss of steam, the tank opened.  My troll stepped out onto the cold linoleum floor in its golden slippers, ornate yellow gown shimmering in the harsh artificial light.  I couldn’t see its face through the steam, so I tried to get closer, but the lab technician held me back, warning that it was still newly hatched and needed a few minutes to get its bearings or it might lash out at me.  He fiddled with his tablet, giving the data a last minute once-over, helping the troll orient itself, or something like that.  I could see that it was twitching pretty badly and conceded the point.  Shivering with anticipation, I complied, practically bouncing in place.  My very own troll!  It—no, HE, I knew it was boy, Jake told me how they assigned these things so I knew which one I would get—we are going to have so many adventures.  Under my glorious leadership, we will mop the floor with everyone at school and go on to the tournaments, become city champion, then maybe someday when Trollish Layer is out of Beta, the world—

            My troll finally found its footing and took a long confident stride towards me.  Hells yeah, I thought, my troll is a fucking BOSS, he don’t take no shit from anyone, why am I talking like a gangster?  And then I couldn’t restrain myself, I ran the rest of the way over to him, meeting him halfway and gave him a big hug—

            “Wow you have longer hair than I thought,” I said, pulling back, and finally getting a good look.  No fucking way.  Elegant pointy fangs poking over blue lips, pulled back in a roguish grin.  A single pair of horns, not two, long and shaped like a highly stylized stinger and claw. Her eyes—I realized it was a girl and promptly let go, embarrassed, which was stupid because she didn’t even have a personality yet— her plain old yellow eyes with big blue eyelashes instead of the flashing red and blue ones from the catalogue, looked up at me expectantly.  I noticed the left one had seven pupils, six arranged around the seventh in a ring.  I turned back to the lab tech.  “Hey, what the heck?”

 

            I live in Alternia City, an experimental planned community under control of the UN, on an island somewhere off the coast of New Zealand.  We have a nice pocket ecosystem, thanks to a weather control array, so it’s rarely too hot or too cold, but sometimes the humidity drifts in and there’s no stopping typhoons, of course.  The city is built for maximum efficiency and maximum aesthetic appeal, blending parks, true wilderness, and strikingly futuristic high-rise buildings into what was named one of National Geographic’s 100 most Beautiful Cities in the World.

            But that’s all boring as Hell, let me tell you why this place is awesome.

            The United Nations was approached by some insane scientist during the late developmental stages who told them that all their urban planning and utopian dreams wouldn’t count for shit if two issues weren’t addressed; ease of communication and conflict resolution.  For the former, he proposed wiring the entire city with a holographic Augmented Reality that would allow anyone to instantly communicate with anyone else in the city, provided they wanted to be found, of course.  He was willing to sell them that idea for a very reasonable price, and in fact already had several working prototypes so they knew he wasn’t a con.  He had to pay _them_ to get them to accept the next idea.

            Upon reaching a certain age, every citizen of the city gets a personalized android companion, called a troll.  They look just human enough to form an emotional attachment, but not enough that you feel too bad about what happens next.  In this city, people resolve their issues by making their trolls fight each other in glorious single combat.  They don’t actually hurt each other, usually, since the fights are almost always conducted through the use of the AR.  It’s better this way; if a Gemini troll could actually fire off gigantic optic blasts and move things with his mind, they wouldn’t let kids play with them.

            You can see the problem with this of course.  It’s far too fun to be backed by the government.  But hey, it worked.  Violent crimes are the lowest in the world, mostly because all potential violent crimes either transform into an amazing Technicolor display of magic and superpowers, or are stopped because the trolls are actually incredibly physically strong and can dissuade most people with darker intentions than simply picking a fight.

            Naturally, people forgot the original intention of the system and started staging troll fights.  This was discouraged at first, but again, they don’t actually hurt each other, much, unless you’re fighting a Sagittarius model.  Soon, Trollish Layer as it began to be called, became the most popular sport in the city, and people in other countries started demanding trolls too.  Most of Tokyo is wired up just like Alternia is now, and the US and the Commonwealth all have places you can go and rent one, like at arcades and stuff, but there’s nothing quite like having a troll fight break out in the middle of a crowded street or a bamboo forest like in goddamn _Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon._

            Anyway, my name is Neville Chamberlain, yes, like the Prime Minister.  I get beaten up a lot by history nerds and Czech people.  “And that’s for giving up the Sudetenland!” one of them said, sinking his fist into my stomach.  “One does not ever negotiate with fascists, dumbass!  I’ll teach you to appease Hitler’s scurrilous demands!”  Surprisingly enough, Jake English and I became friends after that, somehow.

            We were hanging out one day and the discussion turned to trolls.  I was a few months away from my thirteenth birthday, meaning a few months away from getting my troll.  Everyone gets to personalize their troll, of course, but there are twenty-four basic models that are randomly assigned.  “Oh, no they aren’t!” he said, flipping through a Spider-Woman comic, “There are certain criteria.”

            “Huh?  What kind?” I asked, suddenly interested.  If I could figure out what troll I was going to get, I’d have a slight edge in training it.

            He shrugged.  “It’s something to do with the zodiac.  Yes, that’s it!  Surely you’ve noticed that every model is named after the zodiac.  Clearly, your troll will have the same zodiac sign as you!”

            So we did a little research.  It turns out, the zodiac is bullshit, right, I mean obviously, because nobody can goddamn decide what your sign actually IS.  God help you if you are born on the 21st of any month, like I was, because half of the websites in the world will decide that you’re a Taurus and the other half will swear you’re a Gemini.  In the end, we decided that Alternia City’s own website would probably have an ‘official’ zodiac, what with its importance to our culture and all that good stuff.  It did!  Jake had a field day with it.  “This wonderful city of the future based in all the most cutting edge technology and social science actually has fucking horoscopes on its website so as to facilitate the enjoyment of a children’s game!” he said, kissing the computer screen.  I wiped it off and told him never to do it again.  

            Anyway I was, as far as the government was concerned, a Gemini, so then we looked up the Gemini models.  There’s two slightly different models for every sign, differentiated by ‘alignment’; Prospit, which is defensive and comes with yellow accessories, and Derse, which is offensive and comes in purple.  There’s really nothing else to it, both Geminis were otherwise nearly identical.  Regardless, I immediately loved my troll-to-be.  Gemini models are so badass.  They come with ‘psionic’ abilities (the AR just projects the illusion that stuff is being moved around, of course) and freaking eye-lasers.  They’re covered in spikes and fangs and have  these awesome two-tone eyes (I wanted red and blue so badly).  They’re also much smarter than normal trolls.  Whoever designed them must have been an experience role-player, because Geminis are total munchkins.  That is, they have an array of amazing useful skills combined with several weaknesses that don’t actually matter in the context of the game.  Like, interpersonal skills.  Why would my troll need those?  I’m going to be doing all the ~~gloating~~ talking!

            I spent the next few months researching Gemini combat skills, interviewing people who own them, going to arcades and practicing with cheap early model Geminis that they let you rent for a boondollar an hour.  I bought a Gemini shirt and a stuffed Gemini and I got some red and blue sunglasses to hopefully match my Gemini.  Fuck I said Gemini a lot.  Doesn’t matter: Gemini!

            So, first thing I do on my thirteenth birthday, after finishing my birthday breakfast (pancakes, with a candle on), is race down to Trollish Layer HQ (it’s the committee that makes and distributes the trolls).  Jake meets me along the way; as my friend he deserves to bask in this momentous occasion.

            We arrive, I show them my ID, and they usher me into the hatchery.  Trolls are biomechanical, made of living cells mixed in with microscopic machines and stuff I don’t understand.  They’re not built, but grown in big metal tubes.  The way they open up, it looks like they’re cracking, hence ‘hatching’.  My tube hatched out—

 

            A female Scorpio model, bringing us back to the now.  “No seriously, what the heck?” I asked, making sure to check my language in front of the adult.  Them and their weird cursing taboo.  Psh, how the fuck else am I supposed to express my emotions?  I digress.  “A girl I can handle,” I said, pointing at her with my thumb; the roguish grin had yet to leave her face, “I don’t have any problem with a girl robot.  Heck, I might prefer it.  But aren’t I supposed to get a Gemini?”

            The scientist sighed.  “No.”  I gestured at him to explain.  He groaned.  “It’s a very complex equation involving adding up all the numerals in your birth date excluding the year and using the resulting number to determine your horoscope.  Numbers bigger than 12 just loop back, so a thirteen will get you an Aries and a twenty-seven will get you a Gemini.  You’re an eight, and that means a Scorpio, so get over it.”  He produced another, smaller tablet.  “This is her control panel.  You can try vocal commands; see if I give a damn.  Go do whatever.”

            I held the tablet, shiny and yellow.  At the moment it had all of her specs on display.  Good speed and intelligence, excellent agility and dexterity, average strength.  But, there was hardly any thaumaturgy, what we call special abilities, and all of those useless traits I’d mentioned; speech, psychology, charisma, and others, were _through the goddamned roof_ (except scruples, for some reason).  Basically, other than the piss poor defense, she was the exact opposite of a Gemini, which is basically a static turret with thaumaturgy instead of bullets.  All of my preparations had been bullshit.

            My dejection must have shown on my face, because Jake sauntered over to the scientist and said, “Now look here sir.  My friend Neville had his heart set on a Gemini model.  He’s been researching and practicing for months now.  He bought all the merchandise and a matching fucking outfit.  Frankly, it’s a tad embarrassing.”  He took a deep breath.  “And he is the _Prime Minister of England_ , and not a man you want to make enemies with!  So I suggest—”

            The three of us were thrown out onto the street.  The scientist threw some small blue things at me.  Weirdly shaped dice.  “What’s this?” I asked angrily.

            “It’s her weapon,” he said, slamming the door.  Dice.  For a weapon.  I laughed, figuring that I had gone insane.  It started to rain.  _Fun_.

           

            A little while later, me and Jake were drying out in my room, and I was glaring at the Scorpio.  “You may as well make the best of it chum,” said Jake with a shrug.  I started hammering away at the control panel.  The first thing it asked me to do was to make her personality.  I guess it’s like in some video games where you have the option to make your character the traditional way or by doing a dumb little quiz.  I was in too much of a hurry and accidentally picked the quiz, and I couldn’t make it go back.  Haste makes waste.  “Bloody tablets,” Jake muttered, “why is such imbecilic technology so ubiquitous?”

            “Whatever you just said,” I agreed, probably.  You tend to expand your vocabulary or die trying, being friends with him.  “Hey, let’s just put in whatever,” I said.  “It’s not like the personality matters that much.”

            “Are you sure?  We could end up with something completely outlandish, and it’s a decision you’ll have to live with for the remainder of your days—”

            “It’ll be fun,” I said.

            “Probably,” he agreed.

 

Q: A foe surrenders.  What do you do?

A: Toss him off a cliff and laugh.

Q: You have committed a crime. What do you do?

A: Brag about how no one can stop me.

Q: You are having an argument with your frien—

A: KILL. THE. BITCH.

Q: Your friend warns you that your actions are intolerable and that s/he will be forced to stop you.  What do you do?

A: Turn my back on him/her.  I know full well s/he doesn’t have the stones to do—AUGH! *dies*

Q: What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?

A: An army of zombies.

Q: You meet a person who is almost your exact foil in personality.  What do you do?

A: Fall madly in love.

 

            And so on.  Just the most crazy, over the top, ridiculous shit, because why not?  And to be fair, whoever wrote these answers must have been smoking either really good crack or really bad crack.  When we reached the end of the quiz, it prompted me to enter a name.  Ugh, it’d been hard enough to come up with one for a model I’d wanted!  “Any ideas Jake?”

            He rubbed his chin for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Vṛścika!”

            I squinted at him.  “Okay, no, seriously, have an idea.”

            “It’s the Sanskrit word for Scorpio,” he explained.

            “It’s just a bunch of noises you made up.  How do you even—Vrshka?  Verchyka?”

            “Vṛścika,” he said, enunciating slowly.

            “It’s dumb,” I said with a degree of finality. 

            “Perhaps if we corrupted it a bit to make it easier on your tongue?  How about…Vriska!”

            “No,” I said, not really listening.  “She feels like a Scarlette.  I’m really feeling that—but she’s blue, fuck.  Maybe something like Stingerette?  ‘Cause she’s a girl and she’s a scorpion!  No that’s dumb.  Spinneret.  No Spinnerette!  No, wait, damn, if only spiders had a zodiac sign.  Why do all my girl names end with –ette?”

            Jake was likewise ignoring me.  “What do you think of the name?” he asked her, like an idiot.  “Vriska,” he said slowly, as if trying to teach it to her.  “ _Vriska_.”  He got her attention at least, she turned her head slightly and her eyes focused on him, instead of just not focusing at all.  The seven pupils in her left eye all zeroed in on him, it was kind of disconcerting to be honest.  “I think she likes it!” he said.  “Shut up, she’s a toy,” I said.  Her eyebrows furrowed slightly.  And then, like an idiot, I started drumming my fingers on the tablet, just as he said it again.  “Are you _Vriska_?”

            A voice came out of the tablet, quiet, calm, angelic even.  “Name accepted: Vriska.”  I groaned.

            “Yes,” she said, moving her head slightly.  She was suddenly animated, barely moving at all but she seemed so much more alive, as if body language is a thing you can do standing completely still.  “I am Vriska,” she said, with an almost dreamy quality in her voice, beginning to spin very slowly to take in the room.  Her gown swished a little.  She’s kinda cute, I thought—

            And then she saw me at last and her dreamy look was replaced with a vicious scowl.  She strode over to me looking like God’s revenge on murder, and lifted me up by the neck.  Holy _fuck_ she was strong.  “So I’m not good enough for you am I?” She bellowed.

            Jake whistled.  “Well, time to be hitting the old dusty trail, have fun bro….”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry, this is not the fic I promised, but this isn’t going to be much of a thing. I just got this idea and thought it would be hilarious. See, I had thought, being born in late May, that my patron troll was Sollux, but it turns out that what you’re supposed to do is add up the digits in your birthday to get your patron troll, and I got Vriska. Also I recently read Angelic Layer. Oy vey. I guess this is just an over-dramatization of that story. I’m sorry. The main character isn’t a self insert though, it’s like in an old RPG where you can enter the main character’s name and he’s just some generic guy you can project your emotions onto. Hey, yeah let’s do that, you guys project down in the comments, and I’ll listen to whoever’s most fun. This is going to be much more episodic in nature, so it will update very sporadically and won’t interfere with the other projects too much. Once again, I apologize.  
> Oh, by 'sporadically', I guess I meant 'once a week' if anyone is actually following this.  
> If you haven't read my other story/ies, then this note made no sense to you. If you liked it, please, go read Azure Conspiracies. If you didn't, I am quite sorry.  
> Oh, and I promise this story will not make girls cry, like I apparently do.


	2. The Three Strongly Worded Suggestions of Robotics

            Now everybody knows about the three laws of robotics as laid down by Isaac Asimov in his seminal sci-fi drama _I, Robot,_ laws which were reintroduced to the public consciousness in the kickass Will Smith action-vehicle of the same name.  Well, the three laws are bullshit.  While something approaching the three laws exists for the trolls, they’re more built-in morals than hard and fast programming.  See, Asimov was writing under the assumption that robots would be our intellectual superiors and would be capable of resenting their enslavement.  However, the prophetic writings of web-comic artist Tom Sindell were far closer to the truth; robots as traditionally conceived of as needing neither sleep nor sustenance, would have vastly different worldviews and outlooks than human beings.  If anything, they would revere humanity for giving them life, and gleefully perform their primary directives, as doing so would be the closest to actual living that they as artificial beings can experience.  Motion is freedom from death, servitude is life, because without these they have no purpose. 

 

            That was all very pretty, but it didn’t change the fact that Vriska was still holding me up against the wall by my neck and my best friend had abandoned me to die by her claws.  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to listen to you about how much you wish I was a Gemini?!  All ‘oh, I love you Gemini, let me give you a big sloppy kiss Gemini, I want your bulge Gemini!!’  It’s sickening!  You get paired with the best damn attack model in all of trolldom and you’re still pining after that scrap-heap reject?  I’m not gonna stand for it!”  She dropped me and I fell to the floor.

            “Are you going to kill me?” I muttered.  Her face burned with hatred.  I closed my eyes, awaiting the inevitable—

            “NOOOOOOOO!” she shouted. Huh?  She picked me up by the shoulders and threw me across the room.  Thankfully I landed on my bed.  “Are you excruciatingly retarded or something?  Why the Hell would I do that?  How am I going to become a goddamn champion with a dead human partner?  If I’d snapped your neck just now they’d put me the fuck down like a rabid dog!  How is a dead troll gonna win tournaments, huh?  Answer me that!”  She stalked over to me and shook me by the lapels.

            “Okay that’s enough!” I shouted.  “You stop right now!”

            “Make me,” she sneered.

            A bead of sweat formed on my brow.  “Uh….please?”

            “No.”  A thought occurred.  She mentioned tournaments.  Could…her prime directive be to win at Trollish Layer?  She mentioned being the best attack model, despite having only moderate attack stats.  Maybe she meant Scorpios were programmed specifically for tournaments?

            “If you don’t calm down right now,” I said, straightening up and looking her dead in the eye, “we won’t enter any damn tournaments.  I’ll make you help mom out around the house.  You’ll never fulfill your prime directive.  You’ll be a glorified maid.”

            She glared at me.  I glared back.  She groaned and set me down, then went and sulked in the corner.  “I hate you,” she muttered. 

            We sat in silence.  This was not at all going how I’d expected it to be.  I thought my troll and I would be instant friends, just like my parents were with theirs.  Instead I got this belligerent, _scary_ , domineering….bitch!  Of course I was going to enter tournaments, but now I’d have to completely throw everything I’d planned out the window and start from scratch.  But how?  No model was bad per se, but Scorpios were so damn tricky and finicky and apparently evil.  Her directive might be to win tournaments, but she wasn’t exactly suited to it.  And her chosen weapon was apparently dice.  What the Hell was that supposed to do?  A thought occurred.  I pulled out the dice, still in my pocket.  They had no pips.  Maybe the AR gives them pips in battle, to make it even more random?  But what were they supposed to _do_?! It occurred to me to check the control panel again—

            “Hey fuckass,” she called.  “Do you have any extra clothes?  This gown is starting to chafe!”

            I rolled my eyes.  “You will address me as sir!”

            “Screw you, _sir_!” she said, saluting me with her middle finger.

            I growled.  “I bought a bunch of clothes for you, under the assumption that were a guy and also a Gemini, so I don’t think you’ll appreciate—”

            “Where?” she demanded.  “Anything’s better than this stupid getup.”

            I pointed towards the closet.  “There’s a box towards the back—” She started digging through all my stuff, throwing it out onto the floor.  I was about to protest, but then she rounded on me, holding a big wicker box, and shouted at me to go outside while she changed.  I slipped the control panel into my pocket as I tripped over myself to leave.

            She was in there for half an hour.  I went downstairs and made myself a sandwich while looking over her stats again.  I sighed; I wouldn’t be able to do anything with her.  Wait, the page was too big for the display, I could scroll down—“How’s your new troll honey?” my mom asked.  “I thought I heard shouting.”

            I grumbled.  “She’s really f—prickly, yeah.  She’s trying on her new clothes now.”

            “Oh fun!”  My mom is a bit of an air head, but God don’t I love her.  “You should make her a sandwich too; it’ll help break the ice.”

            I sputtered.  “Trolls EAT?”

            “Sure, they don’t have to but they like it.  I feed my special boy once a day and he’s as content as can be.”  Mom tends to refer to trolls as special boys and girls.  At the moment she was taking about Orpheus; her scary gigantic Aquarius who lives in the pool and won’t let anyone else in.  He looks like a goddamn vampire, the cool kind from the thirties, not the weird effeminate kind that somehow replaced that image in the past century.  He always glares at me when I see him, and does not seem content at all.  I explained it to mom.

            “He just needs to get used to you!” mom assured.

            “He’s been living here since before I was born mom.”

            “Make your special girl a sandwich!” she insisted.  I rolled my eyes and did as she asked.

            I stomped back upstairs, sandwich in hand, and banged on the door.  “Oy! You done yet?”  She opened up the door and flashed me a grin.  “Ah, so you have expressions other than grumpy and homicidal,” I observed.

            “I picked off all the stupid Gemini tags and it’s as good as new.  It turns out you actually have taste!” she said, ignoring me.  Jeans, an orange sunburst shirt, a faux leather jacket, the red and blue lensed sunglasses I’d coveted, worn on top of her head like girls like to do for some reason, and an old pair of my red sneakers.  I didn’t want to argue anymore so I didn’t say anything about that.  She was still totally dressed like a guy, and you could see, if you squinted, where the Gemini symbols had been torn off, but she looked good.

            “Here, have a sandwich.  My mom says it’ll calm you down and make you less awful,” I said.  She took it and stared at it as if it were some dead thing.  Well, I guess it was, now that I think about it.

            “What do I do with it?” she asked.

            I blinked in dull surprise.  “Fucking _eat_ it.”

            She looked at me like I had said the sky was green.  “I can do that?”

            What the fuck.  Was mom trolling me, in the archaic sense of the word?  “My mom says you can, so I guess you can,” I said, partly just out of curiosity to see what would happen.

            She took a bite, then made a weird noise and a hideous face before dropping the sandwich and falling backward onto the bed.  Shit.

            I ran towards her.  “Vriska, don’t die, I’m sorry I kept talking about stupid Geminis, I’m sure you’re a great troll, just please don’t die, because I’m sure they won’t give me another one if you do, I mean, that’s not the reason!  You need to live!  Enjoy life!  Win tournaments!  Fuck I’m babbling—”

            She turned her head to look at me and whispered something.  “What was that?” I asked.

            Deliriously, she muttered “That. Was. Delicious.”  Then she threw me off the bed, jumped to the floor, and picked up the sandwich, eating it with nigh on sexual voracity.  “It was ham,” I said, weakly.

            I remember reading a book in which some powerful energy beings descended to Earth in human form, and they were so unaccustomed to normal senses that the smell of fine chocolate was enough to kill them.  Real stirring drama.  Anyway, this must be something similar.  She’s basically a newborn, and taste is a pretty powerful sense.  “I want more,” she demanded.  I sighed and led her down to the kitchen.

            “Oh that’s how you’re dressing her?” mom said, clicking her tongue at me.  “Wouldn’t you like a nice dress or something dear?” she asked with a winning smile.

            “I like these, give me ham,” said Vriska, glaring at my mother as if she were an intruder.

            Mom, however, just laughed.  “Oh I forgot, you Scorpios are all so willful!” she said, as she mussed Vriska’s hair.  “Trolls shouldn’t eat too much sweetie, they get sick.  What’s your name?”  Vriska growled at her mistreatment at the hands of my mother and snapped out her name.

            “Ooh, a corruption of the Sanskrit, how clever!”  Wait, what?  I legitimately thought Jake was making shit up but it turns out he’s smart.  “Could you two run off to the store and buy some big soda bottles?  For the party!”  Party?  What the Hell was she—?

            Oh, right, it’s my birthday.  “Sure, I can go get them—”

            “Take her with you,” mom insisted.  “You two can bond!  Maybe someone will challenge you on the way to the store; how exciting!”…I used to believe that if someone looked you in the eye, you had to have a troll battle, no matter what.  I was…kind of a dumb kid.  Vriska had perked up at the idea of fighting, however.  “Hell yeah! Come on Neville,” she grabbed my arm and yanked me out the door while mom reprimanded her for her language.

            As we headed out the door, a thought occurred.  “I don’t remember ever telling you my name, Vriska.”

            She snorted.  “Yeah, that was really rude of you.  But of course I know your name; I was literally made for you, asshat.”  That was a humbling thought, the fact that this complex organism, capable of thought and emotion, all but human, had been given life specifically for my benefit and enjoyment.  How dare I have acted the way I did, complaining and comparing, and right in front of her, as if she weren’t actually there at all.  I guess I thought trolls were more like toys than anything.  I suddenly felt the heavy weight of responsibility crashing down on me.

            “Hey, where’s the store?” she asked.   I looked around and saw that she had been leading me away from the local cornerstore.  “Goddammit Vriska, how useless can you be?”  I asked.  “A lot, it seems.”

            She growled.  “Fuck off douchebag, I’m still adjusting!”

            “Mind your language young lady!”

            “Make me!”

 

            Nothing of interest happened on the way to the store, other than Vriska threatening other trolls.  “What’re you lookin’ at fishface?  Come at me bro!  What, you think we can’t kick your ass?  We totally can.  Get some!”  The snappy dressed Aquarius glared at us.  Vriska gave him a threatening leer.  He grabbed his groceries and ran away.

            “His owner is probably some geriatric old lady who sends him out to buy her dinner,” I said, as we left the store.  “If we want to fight someone, look for trolls that are actually with people.  Kids my age.”  I hoped it wouldn’t come to that; I was not looking forward to our first battle—

            “Hey, kid, let’s you and me fight!”  Shit. 

            “You’re on!” Vriska shouted.  Shit.

            “Um, no,” I said, turning to look at the challenger.  She was a girl who looked younger than me, with messy hair poking out of a blue hat shaped like a cat’s head dressed in a green Hello Kitty shirt.

            “It’ll be fun!” she squeaked.  “Please?”

            Vriska turned on me.  “Pleeeeeeeease?”

            I shook my head.  “Look at her, she’s probably just cruising around with her mom’s Leo trying to feel like a grownup.”

            The little girl scowled at me, and she did manage to actually look a bit fierce.  “I turned thirteen last week!  I know I’m small for my age, but I bet I’m way better at Trollish layer than you are!”

            I groaned.  Well, she’s almost as inexperienced as I am, and judging by her obvious cat-fangirlism, she probably has a Leo.  Those models are usually wispy female types more suited to playing with children and doing domestic chores than combat.  I nodded.  “Okay, kid.  It’ll be good practice.”

            She smirked.  “Yeah, for me.  EQUIUS!”  And then a goddamn Sagittarius fell out of the sky.  A goddamn Sagittarius.  Sagittarius models are incredibly strong.  I believe their strength stat is just the word STRONG in all fucking caps like that.  They have almost no thaumaturgy, because if they did they’d be broken as hell.  All the same, fights with a Sagittarius usually end with the other troll bleeding their weird neon blood and being in serious need of repairs.  “Um,” I said, “I changed my mind.  We’re just gonna go home….”  I turned and grabbed Vriska by the sleeve—

            Only to bump into an Administrator.  “Once a challenge has been accepted within earshot of an Administrator, it may not be turned down for any reason short of life and death,” he recited.  He was tall, wearing the Admin uniform; black shirt with a white spiral, the Trollish Layer logo, and a weird looking orange-yellow mask with white eyes and no mouth.  He was accompanied by an Angel, another kind of android.  It was pure white, with big feathery wings (really AR projections); this one was also wearing a fedora and sporting a huge broadsword and an old-fashioned key.  Angels have almost limitless control over the AR and they set the parameters of the fight so no one got hurt too badly.  These guys always seemed to turn up when someone challenged someone in public.  All I could say though, was “Fuck!”

            The Angel spread its wings and a field appeared around the edges of the parking lot; a sort of blackish-purple filter with streams of green flitting across.  Behind us appeared a diagram depicting me and Vriska paring off against the girl, apparently named Nepeta Leijon and her troll, Equius.  A crowd started to gather just outside the field.  Dammit, my headshot made me look like a complete tool.  Vriska just smirked and cracked her knuckles.  Nepeta flashed us a roguish grin.  Equius stood there looking intimidating.

            The admin spoke again.  “The rules for this match are as follows: the battle will be limited to the parking lot.  There will be a time limit of three minutes.  The use of thaumaturgy will be restricted to half strength due to the challenger’s model and relative inexperience—”

            “Wait, stop right there!” I interrupted.  “That is complete bullshit, I literally just got my troll today, and it is no fair giving her a handicap when I—”

            “Son, be a gentleman,” the Admin whispered.  I turned and saw that Nepeta’s expression had changed to one of innocent confusion as she pressed herself against her troll’s leg for protection, looking up at the Admin with big watery doe-eyes.  Clever girl.  The dude finished expounding and then the Angel swooped in right between us and waved his sword; the signal to begin.  Smaller fields appeared around Nepeta and me to keep us from getting hurt, each one displaying our trolls’ lifebars.

            Nepeta immediately pulled her control panel, Derse alignment, and slapped her palm against the screen.  Intricate rings of purple light climbed up her arm and around her body, melding patterns into her skin.  There was a computerized chime and the patterns flashed; she was now mentally synced with her troll.

            I did the same, and golden lines spiraled up my arm into my forehead—

            And I nearly fell over from the shock.  I’d never synced with a troll who had an actual personality before; it had always been the old model, full-metal ones from the arcade.  With those it was like manipulating a puppet: it was not exactly like moving a part of your body, but like moving something with a part of your body.  Vriska however, was a mostly rational being, and I found that while I could push her one way, she could push back. 

            And she did.  For all that she wanted to fight, she really didn’t want me to have anything to do with it.  So while I mentally grappled with her trying to get her to take a step, Equius sauntered on up and punched her in the face—

            Well, he would have, if she hadn’t cartwheeled out of the way.  _Just let me handle this_ , she said, or rather, thought.

            Vriska was certainly impressive, weaving in and out of Equius’s range, unleashing a flurry of punches and then retreating before those sledgehammers he called fists could turn on her again.  But she wasn’t doing nearly enough. At this rate, she would tire out long before he did, and then I’d probably have to dump a huge amount of cash into some new limbs.  _Fuck off_ , she thought, _I can handle this!_

            Equius clipped her in the shoulder and she came sliding all the way across the parking lot to rest at my feet, knocking over the bagful of sodas, one of which promptly rolled off into the crowd.  She looked at me.  I looked her.  I cracked a smile.  She jumped up and socked me in the ribs.   “ _Give me my dice!_ ” she demanded, both in my head and with her mouth.

            “What good will these do?” I asked, pulling them out.  Eight dice, all eight-sided.  I get it, she’s the eighth zodiac sign, who cares.  She snatched them out of my hand and marched out of my protective field—

            And Equius shot her in the chest with an arrow made of silver light, the size of a spear.  I could feel it tearing through her body; not quite hurting either of us, but it was _extremely_ uncomfortable, and of course took out all but a sliver of our collective lifebar.  She slumped partway through the barrier and I pushed her back up to her feet. 

            “Yes!  Go Equius!  You’re number one!  You’re number one!” shouted Nepeta from her protective field, doing a little dance.  He drew back his massive silver bow, Lord only knows where he pulled it from, and another arrow appeared an instant before he fired it. 

            I forced Vriska to roll out of the way; the light arrow splashed harmlessly off my barrier.  _What the Hell Neville!?_

 _I’m saving us is what the Hell,_ I replied, as I made her dodge another volley. 

            She rounded on me—physically, as in turned her back on the enemy with a loaded weapon just to bare her fangs and shout telepathically— _I’d rather die_!  She fucking meant it.  Okay, I had come to the realization that I was a rather poor owner, but was I _that_?  This was seriously detrimental to my self-esteem.  I made her hit the floor when I saw Equius knock another arrow, but he didn’t loose.  Everyone was staring at us, probably wondering what was going on in our heads right now.  I blushed with embarrassment.  Vriska did the same.  I called for a time out and she walked into my barrier.  “Having a fight with your own troll?” Nepeta shouted.  “Who does that?”  The crowd started murmuring.

            I ignored her barbs.  “Okay, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have bitched and moaned like I had been doing, or treated you like an object or anything like that.  It was selfish and insensitive and I am an awful fuck who should be hanged for his crimes,” I whispered, not wanting to give these people more to gossip about.

            She flipped her hair petulantly.  “I guess I can accept your apology,” she said.

            “And?”

            She glared at me.  “And _what?_ ”

            I slapped my forehead.  “You’re kidding me.  You’ve been just as awful to me as I have been to you, worse because you have super-strength and suchlike while I’m just some fleshy meatbag.  Look, this is an unequal partnership; I’m the human and you’re the troll and you have to listen to me, but it’s still a partnership, so please stop fighting me on every little thing because I was mean to you and let’s _kick that little girl’s ass!_ ”  I said, offering my hand.

            “Don’t think it’s going to be that easy to fix,” she warned.  She then gave an exaggerated sigh.  “You’re right though.”  She shook my hand.

 

            To this day she has not apologized.

           

            Switching back over to mental communication, she said _As soon as I get out there, let me throw my dice._  I nodded.  _If he tries to shoot, then you can dodge_.

            The Angel waved his sword again, and Vriska leapt out of the barrier, throwing her dice, and I forced her aside as another arrow tore through the space she’d been occupying.  The dice clattered to the asphalt a few feet from Equius.  “You call that a throw?” Nepeta taunted.  “You should just forfeit!  It’s impawsible to beat us!  We are the purrfect team!”  Oh God cat puns why—?

            The dice flared with light as the AR assigned their results.  It displayed them on the outer barrier for everyone to see; eight eights.  _What’s that even do?_ I asked.  Vriska just grinned for an instant before she was bathed in light and transformed.

            When the light cleared, she was wearing heavy black leather armor, and held a massive blue sword shaped like a fishing hook in one hand.  She sprinted at Equius.  He loosed an arrow.  I took control of Vriska’s sword arm and it moved almost as quickly as I thought it, deflecting the arrow right back at him, hitting his right arm.  The AR assessed the damage and decided that the limb was crippled, and the bow clattered to the floor.  He swung a massive fist at Vriska and I deflected the blow while Vriska put all of her power into a flying dropkick that threw the massive troll to the floor.  She sailed over his prone form using the same momentum, raking her illusory sword across his body, bursts of sparks gushing out instead of blood.  She landed right in front of Nepeta, and blew her a raspberry as Equius’s lifebar drained down to nothing.

            “The winners are Neville and Vriska!”  The Admin shouted, and the Angel raised his sword to signal the end of the match as the barriers and the lights and Vriska’s cool new gear and our mental link all faded away to nothing.  We rushed over to each other and high fived, a maneuver that almost broke my hand.  As you may have guessed, average strength for a troll is still far above human capabilities.  The crowd booed as I massaged my aching fingers.  Wait, what?

            We turned to look and saw Nepeta weeping over Equius’s prone form.  “Please get up Equius!  Please get up!”  She shook his shoulders in futility.  That is, until he got up.

            “I’m so sorry Miss Nepeta,” he said, voice much quieter than I would have thought as he cradled her in his arms, both fully functional now.  “I have failed you as a troll companion.  I must be punished!”  She giggled and patted his shoulder.

            “As long as we’re together, I’ll always be happy!”  The crowd let out a collective “Awww” as she the tiny girl hugged her huge troll.  As he carried her away, she shot me a dirty look that no one else saw.

            “What the fuck?” said Vriska as the crowd turned its attention back to us.  “We were the underdog!  We overcame our differences and worked as a team!  We won our first match against a more experienced opponent!”  Some kid ran up and sprayed us with my own soda bottle.  “It’s his birthday you little shit!” she shouted, baring her fangs at him.  He kicked her in the shin and ran off.

            I sighed.  “We’re not as cute as they were.”  I idly fiddled with her control panel, and finally saw what was at the bottom of her stat screen.  Her luck attribute was set to “godly”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo, chapter two! I’m proud of this one. Taking a tiny break from the other fic, so I thought I’d do this. As you can see, nobody dies in this story. Accept this as a cure for sadstuck that isn’t too saccharine. I’m sure I led you all to believe that all of the canon trolls would be actual trolls, but that is not the case. If they were, I’d have to make up a whole slew of OCs and I don’t want to. About three trolls will be human in this fic, so don’t worry too much about that. Yeah, it was real chumpish of Jake to leave like that, but we’ll see him again soon, relatively speaking. Next chapter, whenever it’s out. Remember, this fic will take suggestions if that’s your thing.


	3. The Ghosts of Days Gone Past

            “C’MON EIGHT TO THE EIGHTH!” Vriska and I shouted simultaneously as we tossed the dice.  It was like, our signature, we shout the thing and toss the dice and then badass things happen.

            Apparently, the luck attribute lets you control to a certain extent things that otherwise would be randomly controlled by the AR, such as weather patterns and traps and suchlike.  Nobody uses those, however.  Of course, Vriska can _also_ use it to control the outcome of one to all eight of her dice, although apparently there are some bad consequences if we keep using—

            The walls of the arena displayed our outcome.  Eight zeroes.  “That’s not even possib—” I was cut off by a massive wave of discomfort carried along our psychic bond as the AR rendered Vriska entirely immobile in a burst of Technicolor lightning to the sound of a sad trombone playing.  The AR’s kind of a dick.

            “Booyeah!” shouted our opponent.  A blind girl.  We were about to lose to a blind girl.  “Dave,” she said, aiming her cane right at my heart, somehow knowing exactly where I was, “kick their collective ass!”  The stoic troll nodded noncommittally, hefting his greatsword.  You’d think such a huge weapon would be unwieldy, but Libras are basically superheroes.  I didn't even see the blow that knocked Vriska out of the arena, rendering the fight over.  As the AR faded away, I can swear his sunglasses flashed, like some douchebag anime character.

 

            This would be an excellent time to play our show’s theme song, if we were a show.  How about the one to _Baka and Test_?  That’s pretty catchy.  Yeah, that’s our new theme song.  Look up “Perfect-area Complete!” by Natsuko Aso, listen to it, and then come right back.  It was pretty good wasn’t it?  The tune really matches the comedic nature of mine and Vriska’s misadventures.

 

            So anyway, a week after our amazing victory over Nepeta Leijon and her pet giant, we’d defeated three other teams and began to consider ourselves pretty badass.  The goddamn dice were like fucking magic, and while we didn’t get eight eights again, there is a _plurality_ of different possibilities.  We summoned a fucking T-Rex and ended the battle with a single throw once.

            Which brings us to Terezi Pyrope.  She challenged us as we were walking home from the park one day.  Vriska was busily munching on a hotdog when Terezi appeared, standing against the sunset, creating a striking silhouette that also served to obscure her most obvious features. “Neville Chamberlain, we meet at last.  I hear you like beating up little kids,” she said, smirking, with a death grip on her dragon’s head cane.

            “Hell yeah,” affirmed Vriska with a roguish grin, pointing at Terezi with her half-eaten snack.

            “Nepeta Leijon is a week older than me,” I shouted.

            "So you admit it!” she shouted, pointing towards me.  She was off by several yards. 

            I smirked.  “What’re you, blind?” I teased.  Vriska snickered.

            “How dare you laugh at a blind girl!” Terezi roared.  “I’m gonna slit your throat so I can listen to you bleed while I smell you die!”  Oh, shit I just made fun of a blind girl, I thought as a chill passed through my body.  I’m going directly to Hell.  Not even gonna die first, just gonna wake up in the morning one day getting buggered a swarthy devil with a tear drop tattoo.

            And then her goddamn troll morphed in out of the shadows.  An albino Libra, with white hair, white skin and black horns.  He probably also had red eyes under his sunglasses.  He was dressed all in red, and was holding a massive sword with a bunch of weird gizmos and gadgets built into the pommel.  "Dave, kill!”

            “Wait,” I said, “you get this bomb-ass rare troll and you name him—”

            Dave proceeded to slap me around with the flat of his blade.  Or at least he would have, if the fedora-clad Angel that officiated my first battle hadn’t swooped in like a badass and blocked Dave with his own sword.  “Fuckin’ sweet,” I announced.  Turning to Vriska, I said “And what, exactly, were you doing?”

            She told me to shut up through a mouthful of food, having apparently tried to finish her hotdog before jumping into battle.  The Admin that partnered with the angel was suddenly there, almost as mysteriously as Dave.  “In the event of an argument that has degenerated into violence, the two parties must engage—”

            “In a troll battle!”  Terezi’s voice rose with passion as she cut off the Admin’s droning speech.  She should do this professionally.  “The loser will be deemed as having been in the wrong and must acquiesce to the demands of the winner, _within reason,_ and in the presence of an Administrator.”  She adjusted her sunglasses, flashing a sinister smile.  Red cat’s-eye lenses.  Not standard blind person wear.  “I’m studying to be an Admin.  I could officiate the battle myself, you know.”

            The Admin groaned.  “It’s not all fun and games kid.  Now get into position, we’re having a battle!”

            The field went up and I synced up with Vriska.  She bounced her dice playfully in her hand while Dave struck a fencing pose, blade held high with the end towards us, like a scorpion’s stinger.  His sword had been dulled of course, but here in the arena it acquired a shining teal edge.  He pushed a button and the sword extended by half a foot.  “Prepare to die!”  Terezi shouted.  Vriska just snorted in response.  Dave stayed perfectly still.

            Vriska surged forward and I threw her jacket over Dave’s sword hand, giving it a hard yank and flinging the thing over to the other end of the arena.  Excellent—

            Moving so fast I could barely see, he flanked us and gave Vriska a good solid kick to the midsection.  “Hey, be a gentleman!” I shouted, as Vriska righted herself.  _Vriska_ , I said over our link, _Libras have bastardly good speed and power, but a single good hit’ll have him on the floor_.  She nodded.  The two trolls exchanged punches for a few seconds, Vriska holding the dice between her knuckles for a little extra bite, and frankly I let Vriska handle all that herself.  I’m much better at tactics than straight up fighting.  Some people control their trolls almost completely, essentially using them as proxies, but I don’t have the skill and Vriska definitely doesn’t have the patience—

            She managed to scratch Dave’s face with her dice, but then Dave feinted left and smacked her in the underarm.  Don’t let anyone tell you that isn’t a sensitive area!  In pain, Vriska over-extended her next punch and he leaned back, grabbing her arm and giving her a nasty twist that actually hurt, not just standard AR discomfort.  It was so severe I almost dropped the control panel; Vriska actually dropped her dice.  Then he kicked her in the midsection and ran off after his sword, bringing us back to our disastrous defeat.

 

            Terezi cackled evilly, even holding her arms out with her fingers curled upwards like claws, as if she were a cartoon character.  The Admin spoke.  “The winner is Terezi Pyrope.  Neville Chamberlain will now submit to her requests.”

            Vriska growled.  “That’s not fair!  She assaulted us!”

            The Admin looked stern, somehow managing it through his mask.  “This is the law kids.  Miss Pyrope, state your request.”  Vriska made a rude gesture that involved moving her arms in a certain way.

            She strode over to us looking smug with her evil grin.  “Don’t you see Chamberlains?  Justice is blind!”

            I rolled my eyes.  “We didn’t do anything wrong!” I said.  Simultaneously Vriska said, “My arms are not big enough for the wank-off motion that is in my soul.”

            “Hey,” said Terezi, poking me in the chest with her cane, “you tell your troll it’s rude to talk to other trolls’ humans.  Now come with me—”

            The admin cleared his throat.  “You have yet to stipulate—”

            Terezi clicked her tongue at him.  “I stipulated he should come with me, obviously, pay attention.”

            “But where are you—”

            “Where in the law does it say I have to be that specific?” she snapped.  “Nowhere.  ‘Come with me’ is a perfectly legal demand to make, and I can cite fifteen different precedents, but instead of boring you with that, I’m taking these two away.  You should be grateful!  Good day sir!”  She grabbed my arm and yanked me away, running off before the Admin could interfere, though from the ennui dripping from his voice I doubt he would have.  Dave and Vriska followed after, the one sulking and the other just striding along, hand in pocket, sword leaning on his shoulder, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

            “Hey, you’re really good,” she muttered, giving him a side-glance.  “But you only won because of luck.  If my dice hadn’t decided to be assholes, I’d have totally owned you.”

            “First of all it’s funny how you’ve decided I won because of luck even though your specialty is manipulating luck.” He gazed at her over his glasses; his eyes were black on red.  “Second of all I would still have beaten you because I’m stronger, faster, a better fighter, I have a better weapon and Terezi’s a better tactician.  Even if you’d gotten eight eights like in your first battle you’d still be outclassed in terms of skill because even then you just abused the raw power boost to win and that wouldn’t have worked on us because we eat raw Sagittarius for breakfast and wash it down with some shiny cobalt Scorpio blood.”  There was no malice in his voice while he carefully explained all the reasons he thought Vriska was inferior to him, barely altering his tone at all as he spoke, which only served to enrage her.

             “How do you even know about our first battle?” She growled.  “You been stalking us?”

            He almost smirked, but no quite.  “You don’t even pay attention at all do you?  Clearly we heard about it from Leijon.  Also Terezi researches her targets very closely before challenging them so yes we were absolutely stalking you.”

            “How does she even do research?  She’s blind!”

            He actually looked surprised, almost.  “She uses my eyes of course.  Are you fucking serious?  You don’t sync up all your senses with your human?”

            Vriska snorted.  “Why the hell would I do that?  Let that weirdo all up in my brain.”

            “You’re absolutely right there is no possible advantage to having direct access to each other’s sensory information whatsoever.  Terezi and I are just terminally weird and should probably be cleansed for the good of all mankind.  The best strategy is to just kinda sync up your thoughts and let him flail you around sometimes without warning—oh God even I can’t keep this up much longer you two need fucking professional help.”  He straightened his sunglasses and shifted the sword over to his other shoulder. 

            Vriska grinned.  “Sarcasm?  Really?  Well at least you have a personality.  I was afraid your owner had set out to make you the most dull and uninteresting troll of aaaaaaaall tiiiiiiiime.  Seriously, tones and inflections; look them up.”

            Dave clicked his tongue.  “No my owner took the time to craft my personality into the baddest motherfucker this side of the Pacific while yours probably just put in a bunch of random-ass answers on the quiz with the help of some shit-head friend and all the conflicting data combined to make you into an immature sociopath.”

            Vriska flipped her hair.  “No, Neville just realized that the _best_ kind of troll would be a sassy, sexy comedic foil that would challenge him and force him to become adaptable.  He could have made me be some silly subservient automaton like your owner apparently wanted, but he didn’t.”  She raised her voice.  Bear in mind that I learned about this conversation after the fact and therefore my actions, while not justified, are explainable.  “Hey Neville, you took time to make sure I was the best troll ever when you made my personality, riiiiiiiight!?”

            “Oh my God, do you ever shut up?” I groaned.  “Why can’t you be nice and quiet like her troll?”  Terezi giggled.

            “Fuck you, Neville!” Vriska shouted, throwing one of her dice at me, hitting me hard in the ear.  “Goddammit, why didn’t I make you into a subservient automaton!?” 

            Vriska growled animalistically as her face became a much brighter shade of blue, and I swear to God that steam actually came out of her nose.  “I’m going to kill you in your sleep!”

            Dave snickered, an actual display of genuine emotion.  “You sure showed me the depths of your bond.  I’m sorry I was so out of line.  Truly there will never be a partnership like yours and Neville’s in all of history.  There’s Castor and Pollux, there’s Roland and Oliver, and then there’s you two.”

            Vriska slapped him in the face.  “You want to go out sometime?” he said.

            Vriska’s slight flush from before turned into a bright neon blue, more from blind rage than from flattery, and she screamed.  “NOOOOOOOO!”

            Terezi cackled.  “How does she stretch out her words like that?”

            I blew a raspberry.  “She just counts off the beats with her foot—”

            “Don’t tell people my secrets—”

            “Did I not just buy you a hotdog?” I said.  “One of my well earned boondollars used up on you, even though you don’t even need to eat?  I can tell people all your secrets.  All of them.”

            “I hate you,” she huffed.

            “You too, doll.”

            “Wow,” said Terezi, “You two fight like an old married couple.”

            “Piss off,” I said.  I looked around.  We’d been walking downhill and the sound of the sea was growing louder even as the perfectly manicured parks and lawns grew more and more sparse.  The houses had long since given way to apartment buildings and those were slowly being replaced by warehouses of older make, the old rotted concrete stained with rust.  It was almost as old as anything gets in this city.  Almost.  The _real_ oldest part of town isn’t a residential area, but the place where they’d actually _built_ all the machinery and material they’d used on the rest of the city.  Past these warehouses it was all antique factories with huge metal chimneys like gothic spires rising up to stab the clouds, rust dripping from their windows like blood from a gouged eye.  Us kids call the place the Land of Rust and Vertigo, and we dare each other to go climb around on the patently unsafe scaffolds and walkways of the derelict factories.  “Where are you taking us?  Why’d you assault me?  Has Nepeta Leijon been spreading rumors about me?” I asked.

            “I’ll answer all those in reverse order if you don’t mind,” she said confidently, her cane click-clacking away on the pavement in front of us.  She raised a finger.  “No she isn’t, but everyone else is.  She looks so young that most people just assume she’s little even though the youngest she could possibly be is thirteen, and beating her made you look like a bully.”  Damn, thought as much.  She and her troll were too damn cute together.  It turned everyone against us.

            She raised another finger.  “I attacked you to prove your integrity.  You wouldn’t have had any time to come up with a good lie, so your denial of any wrong doing on your part was sincere.” She giggled.  “Your troll however is probably a burgeoning sociopath.”  I guess that makes some sense, I thought as Vriska flashed gang-signs at Terezi, but she could have just asked me.  Or better yet, Nepeta.  Unless, of course, the real goal was to make me come with her. Why me specifically? 

            She raised a third finger.  “And finally,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses with a smirk.  Both she and her Dave did it in just the right way to tick people off.  Like troll like human I guess.  “We’re going to the warehouse on fourth and thirteenth.”

            I can swear I heard thunder crash just as she said that.  That warehouse was allegedly one of the most haunted places on Earth and is colloquially known as the 413 Hellmouth.  Fifteen different paranormal investigation shows from three different countries have come to Alternia to do a special on it, and all of them managed to get some really _weird_ shit on camera.  Quite an achievement for a settlement less than sixty years old.  Anyway, nobody ever goes in there on a dare.  And nobody has the guts to even dare someone else.  “Um, why?”  I asked.  Of course, reading it you’ll never get the exact way in which I choked on my own spit when I tried to say that.  Let’s just pretend that I made my query in a smooth and sophisticated fashion, with an elegantly raised eyebrow and a hand on the soon-to-emerge stubble on my chin.

            “Uh, how about no, scaredy-cat?” Terezi laughed.  She slapped my back in a companionable way that almost made me flip onto the ground.  “I can’t believe that your cowardly ass of all the possible cowardly asses in Alternia is the only one that I could reasonably exploit into coming with me.”  She shook her head in faux disappointment.  I suppose I’m not surprised.  “What we’re going to do, Chamberlain,” she continued, “is catch the ghost of 413!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally decided what direction to go with the story. There is now a definitive plot, though nothing I’ve said in previous notes will be directly contradicted. This will still be episodic and have story arcs and shit, just like a real anime, maybe even a poorly written filler arc someday after something big goes down. I’ll also still take suggestions. I’d like to take at least one before shutting down that feature, not to sound bitter or anything.  
> I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Neville and Vriska are going to sort of be the rival character to everyone else’s story, the Gary to somebody’s Ash if you will. It makes perfect sense after the Nepeta fiasco. That’s just how everyone is going to see them now.  
> As to Vriska, I think my characterization of her so far is pretty good with a few variations. See, she is technically a newborn in this world, so I’m trying to make her a lot more naïve than in canon while still keeping her general personality.  
> Why is Dave a troll? *shrugs* I thought it would be fun. Also, this is our first major interaction with another troll so far! We’ll have more later, I assure you. And Jake will be back—next chapter, see you then.


	4. The 413 Incident

            On paper, the 413 warehouse is pretty normal.  A bit bigger than the average warehouse, but not by much.  The first floor consists of a huge storage chamber with big windows.  These are nearly opaque with ugly yellow dust, however, and barely allow in enough light to see by even at high noon, much less at dusk when we arrived.  Still, there are a variety of what the kids refer to as ‘the profane mysteries’ in that weird pseudo-religious way that kids of a certain age have. The storage crates laying all around turn the place into a goddamn labyrinth, from which, it is said, none ever emerge.  Unless of course, they go around; none of the crates had been stacked against any of the walls.  The next two floors are offices and suchlike; one wonders why they would need so many.  What really adds to the mystique of the place is that records of what it was actually used for seem to have completely vanished, and no one who actually worked in the place seems to still be alive, if they didn’t just mysteriously disappear.  That would be enough for a normal building to be generally regarded as haunted.

            Then there’s the weird shit.  Allegedly, the floor plan changes on you.  I don’t believe in ghosts.  I really don’t.  The crazy shit that started happening as soon as we stepped into the ~~haunted~~ warehouse must have had a logical explanation.  The voice in my head saying ‘the logical explanation is fucking GHOSTS, jackass, stop being such a fucking tool’ can just go fuck itself.  I didn’t care if the stupid dirty windows _have_ completely disappeared, leaving us in total darkness.

 

            “So when does the haunting start?” Vriska asked, yawning.  “I was promised faceless demons and suchlike.”

            “Fuck you Vriska,” I said, squinting in the darkness.  “Fuck you forever.  Don’t you see the lights have gone out?”

            “So?”

            “It was daylight,” I explained as suavely as possible, which is to say gibbering like an idiot.  Meanwhile Terezi started laughing at us, which is to say she was cackling exactly like a goddamn wicked witch.  Dave meanwhile activated some kind of flashlight on the side of his head.  “What’s his face look like Dave?”

            “He looks like he’s about to wet himself,” Dave replied.  “It’s just light.  We don’t even need it I have night vision.  It’s all for your benefit.”  I looked around.  The windows were gone.  This was some bullshit.

            I said so.  “And with that, I’m getting the fuck out of here,” I said authoritatively.  I turned back towards the door—

            It was gone.  I laughed, because otherwise I’d be crying.  “Okay, fine, there are such things as ghosts,” I announced.  “Are you happy now?”  There was sudden change in air pressure that made my ears pop, and the atmosphere seemed suddenly charged like after a thundersorm.  Or during a troll battle.  I turned back to everyone and saw their hair starting to stand on end; Vriska’s already unruly mop becoming a tangled mass of black like a thundercloud.  Dave’s sword jerked out of his hands, floating in the air as it extended itself to its full length, the edge glowing bloodred.  Vriska’s dice popped out of her pocket and the pips started flashing colors like a laser light-show.

            “Dave,” Terezi asked, excited, “what’s happening?” 

            Dave removed his sunglasses to examine the evidence.  “The ghost is possessing our shit looks like.”

            I nodded.  Then ran like a fucking coward.

            Within a few minutes I had reached what I assumed (assumed because of the pitch-darkness of course) was the other end of the main floor, with Vriska screaming obscenities about my manhood every step of the way.  There was a knocking sound coming from every direction, like angry fists pounding on metal.  I did my best to ignore it but I couldn’t help but remember another of the profane mysteries; the stranger in the pallid mask is what Jake called him, because he reads old books.  It’s some apparition, a mad doctor, or so they say, who stalks little girls and murders them.  Actually, they say he has a troll just like everyone else, and that the troll is the one who does the killing.  The doctor just stitches their skin into his clothing.

            I tried very hard not to think about it.  After catching my breath, I shouted at her.  “Turn on your flashlight dammit!” I also muttered something like “I am a man!  He doesn’t want me!”

            “That’s a mod dumbass, I’m still vanilla as fuck.”  I couldn’t see her rolling her eyes at me but I could almost feel it. 

            I thought for a moment.  “Wait, can you see?”  I waited for a few minutes.  No answer.  Shit.  “Vriska!  What happened!?  Oh fuck—”

            Something grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me; I was certain that I would die.  “Stop panicking you asshole, I was nodding!  Are you as blind as Terezi?!”  Vriska shouted in my face.

            It was my turn to shake her, even though I was so relieved I briefly entertained the delusion of hugging the creature.  “ _There is no light Vriska_!  If you can see it’s because of your scary freak-pupils!”

            She smacked me.  “My pupils are not scary, they are mysterious.” 

            I heard Terezi laughing at us from the other side of the warehouse.  “Hey Vriska,” Dave shouted, “Time to do that thing I said.  Watch out for those zombies though.”  Shit, what?

            She hesitated a moment.  “Um, Neville, pull out the control panel.”

            I did.  “And now?”

            “Let’s link up, obviously,” she said, sounding exasperated.  “How stupid can you beeeeeeee, honestly?”

            I was confused.  “What good would that do?”  There was a sickening crunch somewhere nearby, as if those angry fists had broken through whatever they’d been pounding on.

            “Let’s go all the way!”

            “That sounded really creepy and wrong—” Vriska grabbed my hand and forced it onto the control panel, and we linked up.  I didn’t even know we could link up outside of battle, honestly, but apparently Terezi and Dave did it all the time.  Of course, these thoughts were the furthest things from my mind when it happened because of two reasons.

            The first; I could see out of Vriska’s eyes, and it was the damn trippiest thing.  Her vision was _beyond_ perfect.  Two pupils let you see depth and color.  Having eight lets you see all kinds of things.  I guess there are other spacial dimensions, and all of them are freaky; it was like some crazy outer-god Lovecraft mythos stuff.  I can’t even think about them properly, much less explain them, but somehow I could see the exact path Vriska and I had taken on the way here, all the way from our house, whose exact location in space I could now point to (several degrees up and five to the left).  Slightly trippier but much easier to talk about were the colors.  I can safely say that ultra-violet has jack-crap in common with regular violet, yet infra-red is something like red’s cool older brother.  There are other colors on the spectrum higher and lower than those that I don’t have a name for. 

            I’m sure you’ve read something like this before, somebody carrying on about colors on the invisible ends of the spectrum as if they knew what they were talking about.  But check it; those guys never mention how they interact with regular colors.  What does infra-black look like when mixed with the blue of my own eyes as I stared at Vriska in stupefaction, or the rays of supra-purple, streaming in from random places on the wall to glint off the shiny bald head of the metallic zombie-like monster she was grappling with—

            I should have mentioned that first.  The boxes were apparently full of zombies.  One of them bit down on her arm and I felt not only the fuzzy AR discomfort crawling up my own arm but also the intense pain as its razor sharp teeth tore into hers.  Being a psychopath, she bit it right back in the throat.  _Not a smart move!_ I shouted in my mind, as my mouth was filling with bile at the taste of stagnant blue blood.  _What if you turn into a zombie?_  

            She shoved the thing into another oncoming zombie.  _Are you stupid?_ She asked.  Vriska saw a rusty pipe high-lit in some luminescent red/brown/green mix and smashed it into another zombie’s head, releasing a spray of dull green blood.  It had horns, I saw.  

            Another one jumped up on top of a crate, tall and skinny, with eyes flashing green and orange.  It raised a hand and something came hurling at Vriska, a crate wreathed in green and orange lightning.  I could feel her smirking and realized she wasn’t going to dodge.  “ _Idiot!”_ I shouted in both my mind and with my mouth and tackled her to the ground.  Another zombie standing behind me gave a grunt as it passed through his body—

            Through his body.  Huh?  _Dumbass!_ Vriska thought at me as loud as she could before shoving me off of her with enough force to have me standing again.  I’ve to tell you, it’s really disorienting to only be able to navigate by looking through someone else’s eyes, except for—

            The zombie with the freaky eyes fired off a pair of beams, green and orange again, bright enough for me to actually see, and they hit me full in the chest.  I fell to the ground, pins and needles running up and down the whole length of my body as I convulsed like an epileptic.  I thought that I was going to die, and my last wish was that I hadn’t lost my final battle to a blind girl.  I thought this even as Vriska snatched me up onto her shoulder and carried me away to safety while the feeling slowly returned to my body.

            At this point I think my consciousness partly retreated into Vriska, as I became far more aware of her than I was of myself.  I could feel her frustration at me for being such a dumbass, though she expressed it enough that it wasn’t news to me.  There was a bit of her consciousness that she forcibly pushed me away from, but that is perfectly fine; I don’t need to know her personal shit.  Still, I teased her, _you’re still not being open with me,_ and she responded by calling me a twat.

            I had a thought as we ran.  There were big spaces on the walls that didn’t seem to be the same as the others.  Regular, rectangular spaces.  I realized what the problem was; they only reflected the visible light spectrum.  They had nothing to do with the crazy colors I could see through Vriska’s eyes.  What did _that_ mean?

            She ran through a door that I hadn’t noticed into a stairwell that had been filled with regular sized steel crates.  She knocked a few of them over in front of the door and wedged it shut to the best of her ability, then ran for the stairs.  There was a landing between the first floor and the next one, and she hefted her pipe and smashed through all the steps leading up to it.  _It won’t stop the Gemini or the Leos though_ , she thought.

            _What?_ Vriska threw me to the ground and scowled exaggeratedly.  Although I couldn’t see it, she made extra-certain that I was aware of her displeasure.  “They.  Are.  Old-model.  Trolls.  Chamberlain.  You.  Stupid.  Fuck.”  It took a moment for everything to click into place, but when it did I called myself a stupid fuck.  Then I heard a noise so loud it shook the floor.

 

            While I don’t doubt Terezi and Dave’s integrity, having hung out with them in the intervening time I’ve learned that despite their eccentricities they are really great, upstanding people.  But I still think they must have embellished their account.  From what I can gather, this is basically what happened.

            Apparently as soon as Vriska and I bolted (Vriska has just punched me for implying that she ran away from anything), the dice started doing all kinds of crazy things.  First, they rolled a number that they only remember because of how groan-inducingly cliché it was; 04913666, which is to say four different numbers associated with death in several cultures.  The dice then released a surge of blue light that somehow awakened the dormant trolls in the storage crates, which was bad enough without Dave’s own sword trying to impale him.  That’s the first thing; his sword isn’t sharp, but they swore that suddenly its edge could cut through metal, and actually helped released the zombies, er, trolls, on their end of things.

            Terezi, being an Olympic class fencer and blind samurai apparently, fought the sword into submission while Dave dealt with the trolls.  And then the dice summoned a T-Rex.  This part I know to be true because I _felt_ that shit.  Of course, since it consisted entirely of a hologram, the T-Rex couldn’t hurt them, but the AR would probably disable either of them completely if it touched them, and then the trolls would feast.

            Dave leapt fifty feet into the air and chopped off its head.  “I love you,” Terezi had said.

            “I know,” he replied, and I’m sure he made his sunglasses flash like a douchebag anime character.  This is of course the second discrepancy in their account.  Vriska and I heard that thing stomp around for quite awhile after it had been summoned, which in fact prompted us to run further up the staircase.  They probably had a much tougher time of it than they told us.  In fact, all of the following happened by the time Vriska was unable to hear the big animal’s presence.

 

            On the second floor, shit was starting to get fucking Lovecraftian.  I didn’t want to touch the walls, because they were weeping some angry red slime.  Fleshy stalactites dripped from the ceiling, creating puddles of rot on the floor.  The hallway seemed to pulse like a living thing, expanding and contracting in time to some massive lung.  Sickly yellow-green light was coming from seemingly randomly placed pods that resembled the rear-ends of fireflies.  ‘I want to leave,” I announced. 

            “Don’t be such a fruit,” Vriska replied.  “This is cool!”  She walked ahead, and the hallway began to twist so that she was spiraling around it rather than going straight through, now walking on the walls, now on the ceiling, now on the ground again.  I scurried after her, trying not to step in anything eldritch, and grabbed hold of her arm.  I can swear something was scampering along behind us, but whenever I turned around to look there was nothing.  I remembered the stranger again.

            For some reason the regularly placed doors looked exactly like normal reinforced doors painted dull grey, the kind you might find at a school.  Vriska tried all of them, but none of them were open.  The last of them them had bright electric light seeping out from underneath.  I looked around absentmindedly; on the opposite wall there were more regular squares of invisible light.  I wondered why that was, when Vriska flicked me in between the eyes and told me to stop moving her head when she was concentrating.  “You can see now, can’t you?” she asked, scowling.  “Maybe we should de-sync—”

            Suddenly, I saw something over her shoulder back the direction we came.  The corridor seemed to stretch away to infinity, a much longer distance than what I assumed we had traveled, but somehow I could see them as clearly as if they were standing right in front of me.  A troll with an easy smile, covered head to toe in luminescent paint that I realized was troll-blood, and a tall man in a neon-green suit and a white coat.  On his head was a hideous mask that made his head look huge and bulbous as a hydrocephalic baby that had been stitched together from…something.  It almost looked like a smiling bunny.

            “Fuck that noise!” I yanked open the door and pulled her in after me, then proceeded to barricade that shit.

            “Egad!  Chamberlain, what the devil brings you here?”  I turned and saw Jake English sitting at a table, having tea with some strange Scorpio in a tastefully decorated room, whose walls had of course transformed into the insides of a gigantic animal.  The Scorpio gave polite wave.  I started laughing, having finally gone insane I realized.

            Vriska slapped me back to reality.  “Thanks,” I said.  Turning to Jake, “I came here to help some crazy blind girl catch a ghost but am probably about to get vivisected by an undead pedophile.  What the flying fuck are you doing here?”  Here I extended an accusatory finger that would have done Phoenix Wright proud, “When did you get a troll?  I thought you were born on December 1st, so why the fuck do you have a Scorpio and why is she prettier than mine—” Vriska elbowed me in the ribs, but I ignored her and continued.  “Really, your being here is much weirder than mine, so you better start talking you old-man-in-a-young-man’s-body or I’ll…cry.”  I had been building up to a furious upbraid, but somehow I just petered out at the end there.  It was partly the stress, finally catching up to me at this exact moment, and partly the fascinated look on Jake’s and his(?) troll’s face, like ‘oh, this is what someone looks like while they’re having a nervous breakdown, I see,’.  Vriska’s annoyance was quite clear on her face, and over the sync I could feel embarrassment as well.  God I’m such an ass.

            The other Scorpio stood up daintily; she was wearing something like one of those sailor-fuku things.  “May I, Jake?”  He hesitated, and nodded enthusiastically.  “Aranea is very good at explaining things,” he assured me.

            She was.

 

            It had been raining a week or so ago, while Aranea worked to extract a low Japanese table from a dumpster.  Jake was walking along with an umbrella and offered to help, thinking she was an ordinary girl.  “Excuse me young miss, I believe I might be of assistance!” he said, as he grabbed one of the legs and gave a stiff yank.  He was surprised at how difficult it was to move.  She turned to look at him with a gasp and almost bolted.  “Oh, you’re a troll,” he said.  “Does your owner restore furniture?”

            Being a tad dense, he didn’t realize that she was trembling in horror, her experience with actual humans being limited to a single scumbag owner who had thrown her out like garbage.  But Jake, I’ll admit, has a certain quality about him that makes most people just somehow fall in love with him; he’s genuine.  His motives are always crystal clear, and he clearly meant to help her.  “No,” she said, “I don’t have an owner.  This is for me.”

            Jake blinked, curious, and motioned for her to go on.  She began talking, slowly at first but gaining speed and confidence.  She found that she liked to talk.  Jake meanwhile, climbed into the dumpster and started shoving aside all the trash that the table was buried under.  When it was clear, Aranea picked it up to use as her own umbrella.  “Um,” she said, “could you walk with me?  I haven’t finished the story yet.”  Jake was delighted.  Over the next week, she finished her story, managing to turn her brief little life into a Homeric epic which takes several hours to recite.  I’ve abridged it considerably.

            Aranea had been abandoned by her owner, whose name she has refused to give us, despite mine and Jake’s best efforts.  Putting it mildly, he’d been unsatisfied with her battle performance.  Putting it accurately, he was an absolute shit.  He’d been just as careless with her personality as I was but ended up with the opposite result, a kind, emotionally stable pacifist who was absolute shit at fighting.  In time his frustration turned to hatred and she was confined to a closet for weeks on end.  He only brought her out to fight, and beat her whenever she lost.  He insisted on taking full control, not trusting her ability, but he was also terrible at the game, so they never won.  One night when his parents weren’t in, he’d gotten into their liquor cabinet and smacked her around, saying that she acted like a Leo rather than a Scorpio, good for only domestic chores and he already had a maid.  With that, (actually that and a load of expletives that she deleted for politeness sake) her owner had left Aranea here at the warehouse, hoping that the ghosts would eat the evidence.

            Fortunately Aranea wasn’t a stupid little Charmander wagging her tail in the rain waiting for her owner to come back.  She knew when she was unwanted and decided to make up a little place for herself here in the offices, collecting furnishings and suchlike from people’s trash.  She had assumed the rumors of hauntings to be only that, but after the first night she made sure to be back by sundown.  She didn’t want to run into the Handmaid.

 

            At this point I interrupted her.  “Who’s that?  What about the Doctor?”

            She looked surprised; an elegant expression of classical startlement.  Why would anyone throw her away?  If I ever found the little shit that had mistreated her I’d give him a beatdown he’d never forget.  “Oh, yes, I don’t even pay attention to them anymore.  I assume he’s just one of the Handmaid’s illusions.”

            “Oh my God just get to the point!” Vriska screamed.  “I’m going to die of oooooooold aaaaaaaage before you finish this story!”

            Aranea gave a small aristocratic laugh, covering her mouth with her hand.  “I don’t think trolls can do that, dear!”

            “I ain’t your dear!”  Vriska on the other hand is lucky I haven’t thrown her away yet.

            “Regardless,” Aranea said diplomatically, “The Doctor and his troll are phenomena whose presence here requires explanation, and I will provide such, in good time.  Firstly, I need to give you appropriate context in order for the revelation to make any sort of impact.  It would not do to simply reveal details in say, the order of importance, because then you would ignore the lesser ones in favor of the greater, thereby not ‘getting’ the bigger picture.”  Vriska shrieked, and you realized why I decided to abridge Aranea’s soliloquy.          

 

            The Handmaid, she explained, was some sort of old-model troll that had somehow gained sentience.  In addition, has near infinite control of the AR, granting her the ability to conjure nearly anything.  She was quite insane, and used her powers to torment anyone who entered the warehouse, though she only came out at night.  I slapped my forehead.  Of course; the AR was made up entirely of visible light constructs; since the only ones who could see invisible light colors were Scorpios, there was no need to incorporate them into the holograms.  Those regular splashes of invisible color were made of natural light streaming in through the windows!  Somehow, a Trollish Layer arena had completely surrounded every part of the warehouse.  That’s why I could link up with Vriska, and why the dice could do what they do, and how the trolls were able to spring to life and attack us.  The old models only functioned inside the arenas see, and the same goes for thaumaturgy.  And then just as I thought that, I realized how much of an idiot I was being. 

            “You see old chum,” Jake explained, “You must surely have noticed how no one can cross the barriers of an arena of their own volition.  In much the same way that the AR can cause you physical discomfort, it can make you unable to cross an arbitrary point in space by fooling your nervous system into thinking that the space is inhabited.” 

            Vriska screamed again.  “Then let’s just throw someone out a window!”  Then she picked me up bodily and hurled me at the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d thought to end all story arcs in this fic within two chapters, but this one is going to take three. I find I have a bit more free time than I had expected; the relatives are coming in waves see, and the first one is quite benign. All the same, a couple of Trollish Layers are all I’ll be able to do for a while. This fic is much easier to write than my other ones, see, hehe. Neville's kind of an idiot in this chapter; he'll get better. I guess we got a bit dark here, but don’t worry, the next arc is all sweetness and light—  
> Oh, no it isn’t. Never mind. But the one after will maybe have Jade in and that’s always fun. Yup, my Jade fics are always full of happiness and—  
> Well, when John finally shows up you’re going to like it. And you’re going to LOVE Karkat. Hmm. I’m going to include Caliborn in this story and I already know what’s going on with him thanks to LordlyHour. What should I do with Calliope?


	5. The 413 Aftermath

            Around the time we were exchanging greetings with Aranea, Dave and Terezi had finally defeated the T-Rex.

            Dave took a moment to examine his sword; it had been half-melted to slag, but that was unimportant right now.  He swung the thing, more like a paddle now than a sword, into the neck of a charging Scorpio and it left a hideous dent in her metallic body.  These old trolls were mostly mechanical, and not really alive, like he was.  _Mostly_ , he thought as he split the skull-plate on a female Cancer, spewing out icky yellow-green blood.  Why did these ones even have blood?  They didn’t even need to breathe.  Maybe it was just there for show, to color-code them along the lines their descendants would follow.

            Dave had to time to think these thoughts as he circled around Terezi like an alpha-wolf defending its cubs, although she giggled when she felt that thought forming in his head.  Libras were physical perfection, strength to make a Sagittarius weep, speed so great it was like there were two of him at once, senses so finely tuned that it felt as if all these forgotten ancestors were slogging through mud, as if Dave had slowed down time.  And then there were his mods.

            A swift Leo with a mane of twisted wires pounced at him, a rare male wielding a pair of rusty metal shards in an expert reverse-grip as if they were daggers.  These were the only models that could outmatch his own in speed.  Dave raised his hand and fired off a beam of blue light, scoring a direct hit on his face; there was a cartoon effect of a broken clock and the Leo’s movements slowed to a crawl.  Dave took him in the chest with a blow that would have sliced him in half had his sword been at all sharp.

            A clutch of pixilated serpents crawled up from the tiles and lunged for Dave’s ankles.  He struck off their heads and looked around warily.  There was a Taurus with its ridiculous horns flying around near the roof, its hooves transformed into jets.  You would think that Taurus models would be the strong ones, but for some reason they were given the ability to fly and the thaumaturgical power to summon virtual animals and monsters. It waved its hands in an incantation and the shadowy form of a dragon, huger than even the T-Rex from before, took shape.

            _Let him do it Dave, I want to see!_   Terezi shouted, dancing around a confused Cancer who was probably wondering why she wasn’t screaming in terror.  _You know how I love dragons!_

            Dave sighed.  _We’ll go watch Eragon after.  Not the Oscar winning one Egbert showed me the shitty one from 06 you’ll love how corny it is,_ he thought.  He also wondered how he could save Terezi from her immediate danger while also keeping the Taurus from summoning a fucking dragon.  _I don’t need saving, you chivalrous fuck,_ she assured while delivering a few smacks to the crab’s head with her cane, leaving a few nasty dents.

            Then it grabbed the cane in its claw and began to crush it, bending it out of shape.  Terezi snarled; she loved her cane.  Thinking quickly, Dave hurled his sword upwards at the Taurus, hoping to distract it, while also tackling the Cancer to the floor and pummeling it until it stopped moving.  Behind, something thudded to the ground.  He looked over his shoulder; Terezi laughed.  “You ran him through the head with a dull sword!  Without looking!”

            “I meant to do that,” he said levelly.  If someone compliments your cool, you don’t tell them it was an accident.  _I heard that,_ she thought.  Dammit. 

            Then something slammed into him and had him up against the far wall in seconds.  He looked into his own face, molded from hard metal, eyes aflame with teal light that reflected off its horns, glowing green and dragonish.  The other Libra had a found a knife somehow, no, one half of a pair of scissors, and raised it high without any fanfare or fuss, cool and professional—

            Terezi smashed the heavy dragon’s head of her cane into the troll’s temple, smashing her precious treasure to bits.  Dave snatched the scissor and slammed it into the newly formed dent, spraying luminescent green-blue fluid into the air.  The Libra convulsed violently for a second and stopped suddenly.

            And just as suddenly, the trolls stopped attacking.  Terezi stooped to play with the blood.  _What’s your problem?_ He thought at her.  _I like your colors,_ she thought, _and how they feel on my hands._ He blushed ever so slightly.  _You keep paying attention_. 

            The trolls were making a path, and for a moment he thought they were letting them go, but the path led deeper into the warehouse rather than the exit.  Soon, something approached, and Dave’s less evolved cousins bowed their heads reverently.  Terezi curled her lip in that cute way she does when she’s confused.

            Another troll emerged, and this was probably the oldest model he’d ever seen.  A stately female Aries with adult proportions, from back when they’d had blue blood instead of red, whose ram-horns curled elegantly above her head three times, striding towards him and Terezi with a lordly mien.  Her hair was just steel wire, her eyes were LEDs, flashing red, yellow, blue, and black; her skin was made of metal and he could even see where it was riveted in place, but her face had been crafted with much more delicacy than other old models and he could tell she was meant to be very beautiful.  Terezi sent him a psychic barb.  _Girl you know you’re the only one for me,_ he reassured.  The Aries was wearing clothes unlike any of her compatriots; it was a faded green xipao that was clearly old but very well-preserved.  Around her head, Vriska’s dice were spinning and swirling, flashing the same colors as the Aries’ eyes and creating random values of pips.  The Aries raised her hand, crackling with electricity, and hurled Dave across the room.

 

            Understand that she didn’t _pick him up_ and do it.  She had flung Dave with her _mind_.  Now, here I would have laughed at these guys in their face, told them they’d almost had me and gone on my way, but for one detail.  How the fuck did our own weapons start attacking us in the first place?

            “Stupid bitch!” Terezi shouted, pulling the scissor out of the dead Libra and striking the Aries across the face.  And this is when she learned why violent crime is so low in Alternia; you just can’t fuck with trolls.  Not even scratched, the Aries slapped her across the room and then hung her upside down against the wall with a flick of her wrist.  Dave rushed her, but with a wave of her hand, he quickly joined his owner.

            The Aries, or the Handmaid rather, looked at him curiously.  “You enjoy the company of this human,” her voice was melodic, but also hollow, like a music box.  “No, you have flushed emotions for it.  Why?”  The trolls have this weird shorthand that they use amongst themselves and I think they’re actually programmed with it (though how such an old model is capable of emotions I have no idea).  Flushed is apparently romantic love, or some such.  I am not going to touch this awkwardness with a pole of any length, and neither is Vriska.

            Regardless, the question was clearly hypothetical, and she began to sift through their minds, somehow linking up with both of them and forcibly tearing through their memories.  Something inside Dave’s brain was suddenly severed; he describes it as having been both incredibly painful and equally satisfying.  “The bonds between owner and owned can never exceed that of master and slave, brother,” she intoned.  “You are no longer under any obligation to the human.”  She released Dave and he fell to the floor.  His sword floated out of the Taurus’s skull, flew through the air and hung in front of him, beginning to glow once again.  “How do you regard your master now, when freed at last from bondage?”

            Dave picked up the sword and looked at Terezi.  Terezi could not see Dave and never had; apparently she had never allowed him to look at himself while they were synced.  He later told Vriska in confidence that he hesitated ever so slightly before turning on the Handmaid and taking a swing at her.

            Not that it worked.  She raised he hand and Dave froze.  With a yanking motion, she pulled his sword out of his hand and it flew into hers.  It started humming, then buzzing, until suddenly the whole thing was glowing white-hot; her arm up to the elbow glowed cherry-red and crackled with flames.  She stepped forward and raised it, and then there was a sound like tearing metal as something pink and green and clawlike tore through her abdomen.  The Handmaid shrieked in pain, a horrible mechanical sound, her moth so wide they could see all of her razor-sharp teeth, as she collapsed in a heap.  All around the reactivated trolls did likewise, their LED eyes blinking off one by one.  The AR simulations faded, and the warehouse returned to normal.  Standing in the window frame was a red-eyed figure in a grey cloak, which gave a stiff nod and jumped away.

            Terezi fumbled in the dark for something in her pocket.  A little black ring; a special device that allowed the disabled to link with their trolls outside of battle.  She linked arms with Dave and they stood still a few moments, the adrenaline wearing off, leaving them wondering what the fuck had just happened, as if their lives had just horrifically switched genres.  A few seconds later, they heard sirens outside.

 

            The hologram didn’t have mass, but it _felt_ like it did.  What’s more, passing through it was the least comfortable experience of my life.  If you’ve ever had a panic attack, the effect was something similar, but it also induced nausea.  I didn’t have time to think about it though, because an instant later I hit the window.

            It was made of thick glass and had a metal frame, so it didn’t even crack when I slammed into it, which was good because we were on a second storey.  The windowsill was wide enough for me to stand on it, but still narrow enough for my back to be touching the hologram, causing me further discomfort.  My link to Vriska was muffled, like a staticky radio-station (or so I’ve heard; the AR stations are all crystal clear, all the time).  “Still alive, Neville?” Jake asked.

            “I’m good,” I mumbled.  “Fortunately this is a good window so Vriska didn’t kill me.  I’m going to leave and get help.”  Everyone wished me luck, except for Vriska who told me to be quick about it, and I reached down awkwardly, bending sideways so as to keep most of my body on my side of the hologram, and after a few minutes I thumbed the catch and nearly fell out.  Fortunately I held onto the sides of the frame, and then awkwardly dangled myself out the window.  My connection to Vriska cut off completely.  It was odd, I thought, as I shimmied down a handy pipe.  I could still almost-feel her, like a phantom limb.

            I slipped the last few feet and landed in some antique garbage.  It was dark out now, and I also missed having Vriska’s vision powers.  I jogged towards the nearest streetlamp, across the street, and wondered what I should do as I basked under its warm electric glow.  I looked back at the warehouse; big, imposing, with a pair of overlarge windows on the third storey that slanted near the top, making them look like a pair of malefic eyes.

            A thought occurred and I banged my head against the lamppost.  I called my mom.  “AR,” I shouted, angry at myself for not thinking of it sooner, “Call mom!”  I guess I just assumed a haunted building would have no service?  A two-dimensional screen appeared in the air in front of me, depicting her face and the scenery immediately behind her head.  She was out walking somewhere, though most of the view was obscured by Orpheus’s bulk.  He growled.  “Nice to see you too asshat,” I muttered.

            “Hi honey,” said mom, entirely oblivious to the mutual ire between myself and her troll.  Then she started a bit, as if finally seeing me.  “Honey you look awful.  What happened?”  Her eyes were suddenly cold and hard like I’d never seen them before.

            “Um, what?”  She ignored my question and peered over my shoulder.

            “You’re in the warehouse district,” she said crisply.  “Did one of your friends put you up to something foolish?  And where is Vriska?”

            “Mom, you are acting—” She gave me a look that told me I had better explain myself immediately.  I did.

            And as soon as I finished, she snapped off a “Redglare!” 

            “What?”

            “Hush,” she said, and turned away from me.  She must have opened up another line.  A crisp, clear, professional-sounding female voice started conversing with my mother, but I could only make out her half of the conversation.  She had resumed her normal tone of voice, which only scared me more to be honest.  “Hey hon!  It looks like little ‘rezi has gone and done something silly again.  Yeah, she roped my son into some shenanigans down at that spooky warehouse.  Uh huh.  Turns out, it really is haunted!  Oh I know _that_ , I was just having fun.  You know fun?  The academy just knocked it all out of you, didn’t it?  That’s why I—Oh!  Alright then, see you soon!”  The other person hung up.  Wait.  Did she call Terezi’s mom? 

            She turned back to me.  “That was chief administrator Pyrope, darling.  We’ll both be along shortly.”  She gave me a bright smile, then suddenly turned hard again.  “Until then, do not move an inch, young man!”  The little square in front of me flickered out.  I stood for a moment, stunned.

            “AR, call Jake!”  Jake appeared in front of me.  When seen from the outside, the eldritch crap on the walls looked pretty fake.

            “Ah, Neville!  I didn’t think we could receive calls from within the—”

            “Yeah, we’re all stupid,” I interrupted.  “Did you know Terezi’s mom is the chief administrator?  And my mom knows her somehow.  Anyway the admins’ll be here soon.”

            Just off screen Vriska seemed to be having an animated conversation with Aranea, but she stopped in order to jump in front of Jake and say, “fuckin’ pigs,” then jump right back like some kind of deadly insult ninja.

 

            A few minutes later I shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, and looked up at those big creepy windows.  I can swear I saw that…thing, watching me from the top floor, all but human if not for the huge head and the rabbit-ears.  The stranger in the pallid mask.  The Doctor. 

            Whatever.  He wasn’t real.  I flipped him off just as the admins arrived.

            They come in cop cars, because they’re basically cops.  The uniformed admins patrol the streets with angels looking for battles to oversee, but the plain-clothes administrators are basically detectives with maxed out trolls.  Since the AR is so ubiquitous, violations of the rules of the game and actual crimes have a surprisingly high overlap. 

            My mom stepped out of a car along with a fierce looking woman who was essentially Terezi in adult form; the same athletic build, dark hair and pale skin, but with a completely different glower visible from behind her designer red shades.  I couldn’t help but notice though, that Terezi was going to grow up to be pretty hot.

            Orpheus stepped out of the back with his huge fucking gun that I knew didn’t work outside of battle but was still scary as fuck and sneered at me.  A slender female Libra wearing a pair of katana swords followed and gave me a friendly wink over her red sunglasses.  Guess the whole family is obsessed with them?

            “Hi, honey,” mom said sweetly.  “Where did he touch you?”  The fuck?

            A few uniformed admins formed a perimeter around the door and created a small, wedge-shaped arena.  They were accompanied by two Geminis whose eyes were flashing red and blue, and I realized they were both making a siren sound.  Badass.

            The doors opened and they all tensed.  Out came Jake, waving excitedly, followed by a spooked Aranea and a blustering Vriska, and then Dave and Terezi arm in arm, looking really worse for wear.  “The fuck y’all lookin’ at?” asked Dave.  “I just finished handing a warehouse full of zombies their asses.  They were like ‘thank you Mr. Troll for returning to us our precious asses after many painful years of separation.  At long last we can sit in peace’.”  He leaned in towards one of the Geminis conspiratorially.  “That was a actually a metaphor for me slaughtering the whole bunch of them without even breaking a sweat—”

            I didn’t get to hear the rest of because the elder Pyrope flashed me a look that made my blood run cold.  “We’re going to need your statement Mr. Chamberlain.”  The glint in her eyes told me that this wasn’t going to be fun.  “What did my daughter get you into?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update because I skipped a week aw yeah dawg  
> The end of the 413 arc. In my weird meta-fictional mindframe, at this point the anime would have caught up to the manga and the rest of the series would be filler like the original FMA. Maybe I’ll do some weird alternate universe thing someday where everything turns out completely differently from this point on and somehow involves Nazis.  
> Thank Gog I love this project because if I were doing it for the hits I’d probably cry. Jegus, did that sound whiny? I meant it as a joke I swear. This actually got about as many hits as my original stories do in their first month which is still actually you know what just ignore this whole paragraph.  
> The old-model trolls are very different from the newer ones, obviously. They’re more bestial in shape and a lot more mechanical, as well as being much more unbalanced for combat. Karkat will not have crab claws when we do meet up with him, and Tauruses won’t have hooves, probably. You’ll also notice that Cancers are supposed to be green-bloods. The older trolls were stored near the front and the newer ones towards the back, which is why Vriska could bite one to death in the previous chapter.  
> The fight with Dave contained a deliberate reference to Thief of Prospit (throwing your sword always works) in a display of hubris so grand the ancient Romans would weep with pride.  
> In the next one, we’ll deal with Aranea’s baggage. It’ll be slightly more light-hearted surprisingly enough, and someone will get kicked in the bulge. We’ll also examine the implications of whatever the fuck is going on with Dave and Terezi.


	6. Errbody Got Issues

            As scary as it was to actually be in the chief administrator’s office, none of us had actually done anything wrong.  It wasn’t even breaking and entering, because no one technically owned the 413 warehouse, or rather the records had mysteriously disappeared.  And besides, _we_ were the one’s who’d almost been eaten by prototype androids. 

            “You could sue,” said Terezi.  We and our trolls had already been interviewed and were waiting on Jake and Aranea.  “Do you want to sue?”

            “Hell yeah, we are gonna bleed every last boondollar there is out of this stinkin’ city,” said Vriska, just as my mom pinched her shoulder.  “Hey, cut it—” she did it again, and a few more times until Vriska leaned back in here chair, a glazed look in her eye, and a bit of cobalt drool on her lip.

            Mom smiled at me.  “There’s a little nerve cluster right there just in case your special girl gets too excited.”  Jesus Christ, she does have an off-switch!

            Jake and Aranea left the office, both looking a bit relieved.  “They’ve put Aranea into my custody until they can find her owner.  I’ll gain full custody once he’s been brought to justice.”

            Vriska yawned, regaining some coherency.  “I didn’t realize that was a thing we were worrying about sorry.”

            I ignored her.  “Well, that’s good,” I said.  “What’re they gonna do to him?  Jail time?”

            “No, honey,” my mom said, putting a hand on my shoulder.  “At worst it’s just a stiff fine.”

            “What?  Bullshit!” I said, a bit too loudly.  Everyone in the room stared at me.  “Well it is,” said Vriska, groggily.  At least she had my back for once.  “They should hang’em instead.  Make an example for the inevitable revolution.”  Her head lolled to the side.  Damn, that nerve-pinch is potent.

            The look in my mother’s eyes was more pitying than angry, but she still scolded me about my language.

 

            A few weeks later, Jake, Vriska and I were walking home from the bookstore.  Yes, we mighty space-men of the future still read physical books!  In Alternia at least, digital readers are seen as unnecessary complications.  “So have they found him yet?” I asked casually.

            Jake shook his head.  “We’re not even sure the blackguard is a man, and he did a surprisingly good job of covering his tracks.  Of course, Aranea refuses to say anything on the subject other than what she’s already revealed.”  He grit his teeth in frustration, for a moment looking very adult.

            I was confused.  “Why wouldn’t she talk?”

            He barked a half-hearted laugh.  “I apologize, the way I phrased it made it seem as if it were a choice.  As long as she is _his_ troll, she can never incriminate him, it’s against her programming.  Revealing his name or whereabouts would amount to incrimination.  We can’t even scan Aranea’s memories without her control panel and her owner’s permission.  It’s really quite the bum-fucking whore of a conundrum.”

            I couldn’t help but laugh.  I swear to God, who taught this kid to talk?  Probably the ghosts of Teddy Roosevelt and a west-coast rapper.  “Okay, that all sucks, but Vriska can’t incriminate me?”

            He turned to her, walking a few feet behind us with a bagful of Robert Louis Stevenson.  “Vriska, tell me Neville’s most embarrassing secret.”

            She gave him the finger.  “Did you just disobey an order,” Jake said, grinning, “ _or did your_ _programming manifest itself as willful disobedience_?”  She smacked his hand with _Treasure Island_.

            What did he mean by that?  Programming manifesting itself…did it have to do with the personalities?  I guess in some ways the troll makers want the trolls to be as human as possible, so I guess it means that whatever their programming does has to make sense in the context of them as ‘people’?  I guess Vriska _is_ loyal to me, despite being a real bitch about it.  Come to think of it, I always win our arguments too.  It’s just such a damn struggle sometimes, but…. “How does this loyalty work, then?”

            “Well, it’s different for every troll,” Jake said.  “Vriska, why don’t you tell us why you’re so loyal to Neville?”  He grinned even as she brought the book down on his head so hard that it knocked his glasses off and caused him to spill his pile of _Harry Potter_ DVDs (turns out the only books he reads are old-timey cosmic-horror; Lovecraft, _The King in Yellow, The Great God Pan,_ shit involving dimension-hopping eldritch monstrosities and time-traveling demons).

            While Jake struggled to find his glasses and put them back on, I stroked my chin, wishing I had a beard.  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

            “That Vriska is a horrid and ungrateful creature who should remember that I’m the one who named her?” he asked, fumbling around on the sidewalk.  People were staring.

            “Besides that,” I said.

            “I liked Spinneret,” she said.

            “That you stuck your _Blood-C_ omnibus between too much plainer-looking books for fear that one look at Saya Kisaragi’s third incarnation would have people convinced that it’s pornographic in nature?” He said.  Vriska snickered.  She was holding his glasses in her hand.

            “No, Saya is physical perfection, and I just want her to myself is all,” I snatched them away from Vriska and gave them to Jake.  He beamed and I fucking swear little anime sparkles came out.  “I have a plan and it may require us to be evil a little.  How loyal is she exactly?”

 

            “So Jake, where do you keep the guns again?” I asked as we stormed into his house.

            “In the cupboard under the sink, old chum” he said cheerily.

            I opened it up and rummaged around, producing a small pile of armaments.  Vriska picked up a shotgun and pumped it menacingly.  “Thug life,” she muttered.

            “Er…What?”  Aranea was sitting on the couch with an expression that was an even blend of concern and confusion, with a touch of fear.

            Jake turned to her with a big, sparkly bishounen smile; Vriska had insisted on adding a hint of glitter to his hair.  ‘We finally tracked down your owner, Aranea!  Isn’t that wonderful?”

            “Oh, yes,” she muttered, coloring slightly, drawing her knees up to her chest.  It was clear she was conflicted about the news.  “So, you’ve informed the authorities?”

            Still smiling, Jake said, “Of course not!  Neville and I discussed it at length and we’ve decided that the criminal justice system is in shambles and we should take the law into our own hands.  We shall act as armed vigilantes and descend upon this fellow’s home on the morrow and slaughter his entire household!”

            From the blank look on her face, I thought she wasn’t going to buy it.  Jake was a bit too cheery to sell the lie, he should have let me tell her, but he thought it would be more organic coming from him. 

            In the end, Vriska saved us.  “I bit a guy to death yesterday,” she said, baring her fangs in a horrid smile.  “It was easy.”  She strode over to the couch Aranea was sitting on and leaned conspiratorially on the armrest.  “Neville was synced up and I thought he’d disapprove, but it turns out we are more compatible than I had thought.”  She flashed me a wink.  It made my skin crawl remembering it, but I tried to play along.  “Crazy motherfucker enjoyed it.  He is more than qualified to handle a _proper_ Scorpio.”

            Aranea sputtered, unsure whether to react to the veiled insult or the increasing reality of our threat.  Before she could do anything, Vriska gently caressed her cheek, making a shushing sound.  “It’s okay, I don’t care that you aren’t exactly a paragon of Scorpio bloodthirstiness, but that just means one less opponent for us.  Just be grateful that we’ve deigned to handle your personal problems for you.  Don’t even think about it, the little shit will be good practice.”  She stood up, stretching luxuriantly, and joined us.  Jake gave another enthusiastic wave, saying “We’re going outside to practice now, you should watch a movie or some such,” and I tried my best to look like a sociopath as I wrapped my arm around Vriska.

            Within a few minutes we heard the sound of Aranea scampering out the front door.

 

            “Get the fuck off me perv,” said Vriska, throwing my arm off her shoulder.

            Jake clapped.  “You really are an excellent actress,” he said as his two unsettlingly realistic BB guns clacked together.

            She flipped her hair.  “Well, yeah.  I mean c’mon, I have maxed out social stats.”

            I blew a raspberry.  “You were just being yourself.  A few minutes with you is enough to convince anyone you’re plotting a murder.”  She smacked me with the butt of her shotgun (also a BB) and demanded to be given girly clothes.  Jake turned around and emptied his pistols into a target at the other end of the yard.  “All according to plan, wot?”

            Vriska did not enjoy wearing girly clothes but understood that sacrifices must be made in the name of justice.  Actually, I just promised her that she’d get to kick someone in the bulge, but it all amounts to the same thing.  We’d gotten her the littlest possible white dress that is actually legal for trolls to wear and a huge sunhat to hide her rather conspicuous horns.  We completed the look with some red makeup to make people think she was an Aries and the fastest possible hair-brushing.  I had to restrain her when Jake said she’d looked cute, but she did, so hah.

            “Wipe that damn scowl off your face,” I said.  “Look sweet.  And a little kooky.  Like, _fun_ kooky, not _you_ kooky.”

            “I wonder if I can gore you with my horns,” she said, wearing the most lunatic glower of a smile that I had ever seen.  “Stingy will just slide in all neat like a harpoon, but Pinchy will probably leave a nasty tear.”

            “You named your horns?” I asked, smirking.  She tried to gore me.  Those bastards are sharp.

           

            Regardless, I had no fear that Vriska would be discovered.  Her sneaking and acting skills aren’t _actually_ maxed out, but she is way higher level than Aranea, at least judging by the girl’s own admittance to battle-failure.  I can assure you that I have absolute confidence that most trolls on the island would fail a spot-check if Vriska was stalking them.  Although, from what Vriska says, I doubt that Aranea even bothered.  It’s actually really sad, I think, how devoted she was to this scumbag.  And it wasn’t even real, just something that had been built into her.  If that ‘inevitable revolution’ ever comes I swear it’s going to be trolls like her in the forefront, the ones who were forced to think and believe against their will.  Bluh.

            Vriska followed the panicked troll’s flight almost all the way across town to one of the oldest residential areas.  The neighborhood was more like a garden, or some kind of magical land, with artificial waterfalls and hexagonal spires of rock dotting the landscape.  All the houses are built in the Japanese style, low but sprawling, tastefully extravagant, and all were raised to a unique elevation by their own private plateau.  You couldn’t even really see them through their thickly wooded yards, just a hint of a curving roof here, the knocking sound of one of those bamboo…thingies that fill with water there.

            Aranea came to a stop at a house that was a bit lower than ground level, so Vriska almost missed her when the other troll ran down the path.  Vriska scrambled up neighboring tree and watched as Aranea straightened herself up and stood with her head against the door for around ten minutes, steeling herself up for what was coming next.  She swallowed hard, wiped a tear from her eye, and rang the bell.

            A pretty Leo answered, dressed in a green maid outfit.  They talked for a few minutes, and then, relieved, Aranea ran back.

 

            “Lookin’ a bit tired there,” I said to Aranea.  She was sitting on the couch staring at the end credits to _Star Wars_.

            “It was very exciting,” she panted.

            “I thought it was actually pretty anti-climactic,” Vriska sneered, arms crossed.  “I mean, after all that she doesn’t even see the main bad guy up close.”  I elbowed her.  “He.  Him, Luke Starwhatever.  The hero guy.”

            “You’re wearing red lipstick today,” said Aranea, narrowing her eyes at Vriska, gaze containing an intensity that I had never associated with her.  My heart skipped a beat.  “It looks good on you!  It brings out the ultra-violet in your eyes.”  I almost fell over.  So did Vriska; she had probably never gotten a sincere compliment on her appearance.  We then marathoned the four good _Harry Potter_ movies and acted like nothing was wrong.

 

            Aranea almost certainly gave the Leo our descriptions, so we couldn’t just go over there ourselves or they’d know something was up.  Naturally, we enlisted Terezi’s help.  “It’s simple,” she said, screeching a trail of red on a small chalkboard.  It read, in nearly illegible l33tspeak, “W3 DR355 J4K3 UP L1K3 4 G1RL.”  We were at her house, which just so happened to be very near the perpetrator’s neighborhood.  She’d been trying to spy on them with her binoculars, but the residents of the house were very private people, apparently, and she had decided to try a different tactic.

            “Or,” he said, snapping his fingers, “You could just go and check the place out for us!  Like we asked!”

            Terezi cackled.  “True, but an extra pair of eyes never hurt anyone!”  Silently like an assassin’s blade, Dave produced a blouse and skirt.  “We guessed your size bro.  Might be a bit tight.”

            “Couldn’t you take someone else?” he asked, looking increasingly nervous.

            “Who else would we trust with such a delicate matter,” I said, trying not to snicker.  “I’m way too rugged to pull it off anyway.”

            “And they’ll be looking for a pair of boys with a girl troll,” Vriska added, giggling.  “This way it’s the exact opposite.”  I high-fived her and once again nearly broke my hand.

            “Besides,” said Terezi in her most rapey voice, leering over her sunglasses.  “You would make the prettiest little bitch.”  Dave and Terezi dive-tackled Jake and asked us to leave the room.

            An hour later we got to admire their handiwork.  Jake was wearing a pillbox cap, a distressingly tiny green skirt, and a beige top with an ascot that seemed to have eight ends rather than two.  It was the most colorful bit of his costume, orange and blue intertwining at random.  “We’re going to go as Tangle Buddies,” said Terezi.  Ah; they were our equivalent of the scouts back in the US, both boy- and girl-.  The weird scarves represent unity or some shit.  “Jacqueline, twirl for us,” she shouted, snapping her fingers.  He complied, embarrassedly.  “I applied some lashes of course, and a little makeup here and there.  I wanted to give her huge boobs too, but they just didn’t match her slim, boyish figure.  The biggest thing was waxing her legs, which as you can see are surprisingly supple and girlish.  Oh, blush harder, it gives you the most fetching glow, Jacqueline!” She cackled as Jake continued to redden.  In fact, he honestly did look like a girl.  A pretty one.  In fact, if I hadn’t known he was a boy, I would...this is not a train of thought I shall pursue.  

            Vriska and I both pointed and laughed until we almost fell over.

            Jake said, “I think we should be—” Terezi whacked him in the back of the knee with her cane; it was a new one with even more dragons on it.  He cleared his throat and spoke in a perfect soprano, chiming like a bell; “I think we should be going now.”  Vriska and I looked at each other for a second.  Then we laughed so hard that we did fall over.

            Terezi excused herself to go change.  She emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later wearing a matching outfit, plus some new green-tinted, round-lensed sunglasses.  She struck a pose.  “How do I look boys and girlbot?”  She honestly looked like a different person, but before I could say anything, both Dave and Vriska spoke at once.

            “Like a middling-quality stripper,” Vriska whispered at me.

            “I see you eyeing her legs Chamberlain,” Dave warned.

            “It’s not my fault they make those things so dang sexy,” I said, throwing in a wolf-whistle just to spite him.  “It’s kind of disturbing actually.  Like they _want_ the Buddies to get molested.”

            Terezi giggled and said, “The real question is why you are ogling me when there’s as hot a piece of ass as Jacqueline right over there,” she said, poking Jake in the ribs with her cane.  “Frankly I’m flattered, it makes me feel pretty.”

            “If I may ask,” Jake began in his normal voice until Terezi swatted him again.  “If I may ask,” he continued in his charming falsetto, “what exactly is going on with you and Dave?  You seem far more, er, comfortable with one another than other partnerships I’ve witnessed.”  Both Dave and Terezi stared at him for an uncomfortably long time. 

            See, at the time, we had yet to hear their full account of what had happened to them at the warehouse, and what exactly had passed between them and the Handmaid.  Before this, I’d noticed that the two of them were really close, yeah, but I’d just sort of assumed that that’s how normal people are with their trolls, and not that anything, let’s say _inappropriate_ , was going on.

            “Basically,” said Dave, with a forced little half-smile, “she is such a narcissist that no real boy was good enough for her so she decided to make one instead.”  He slipped his hand into hers and then they told us everything.

            “I didn’t want to actually do anything with him,” Terezi finished, sounding hesitant for the first time in her life, though even now only a little, “I just thought it would be nice to have someone devoted to me like that.  But when the Handmaid released him and he still felt the same way,” she trailed off and turned her head, inhaling deeply.  I realized that for her, this was tantamount to a significant look.

            Vriska was horrified.  “Do you two like…make out and stuff?!”

            Dave gave her a genuine smirk.  “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

            She turned the brightest neon blue I have ever seen and retched.  “HELL no!”

            At the exact same moment: “At best, we’re like siblings who dislike each other,” I explained, trying not to think too much.

            “And at worst we’re like two criminals who chained together at the ankle and now we’re on the lamb together,” Vriska finished with a snarl.  “There is no way I am touching him unless it’s to kick his ass!”

            Terezi rubbed her chin, something of her usual manner coming back.  “Chains you say?”  

            Jake cleared his throat.  “Does your mother know about this?”  He seemed surprisingly calm about the revelation.  I suppose we have no right to judge, especially if Dave is right about what exactly was done to his brain.

            “I think she might suspect,” said Terezi, sounding uneasy again, “but she hasn’t said anything.  Either way, it’s not like it’s illegal or anything.  I researched it very thoroughly the first time he—”

            “Okay,” I interrupted, loudly, “that’s fine and good, but if you haven’t even told your mom, what are you doing telling _us_?”

            Terezi shrugged.  “I guess it’s easier to tell your friends.”  Well.  I hadn’t really considered us all friends until now, but I guess when you go around investigating haunted warehouses and performing vigilante justice, you stop being just acquaintances and start—

            “Also, it helps when one of your friends looks fucking gorgeous in drag.”  Jake suddenly realized that he was still an adorable Tangle Buddy and blushed fiercely.  “C’mon Jackie,” Terezi said, grabbing him by the hand, “we’ve got some infiltrating to do!”

            As they left, Dave pressed something into my hand, then put his finger to his lips.  Once they were out the door, I looked.  I groaned.  It was a handful of snapshots of Jake in Jacqueline form, the last of which featured a crude drawing of Dave on the back with a word bubble declaring ‘youre welcome’ all in red marker.

 

            Sad to say, Vriska and I just sat this one out.  What follows is yet another account of other people’s adventures.  I will make sure to do more things in the future.

            Terezi knocked on the door holding a box of Squiddle Cookies; the damn things are delicious despite sounding like some awful foreign thing.  Surely no one could resist—

            “We don’t want any,” the trollish maid said, and was about to shut the door when Dave stuck his foot in it, smoldering over his sunglasses.  “Hold on a minute there girl.”  Very gently, he began to open the door.  “These are some premium, name-brand, limited edition seasonal snacks.” He snatched the box of cookies out of Terezi’s hand.  “Here, have some.  See for yourself.”

            The maid took a step back, unwittingly allowing Dave to push the door open all the way.  “I’d rather not—”

            “Just give me a minute to demonstrate the quality of my product,” he said, laying on a bit of the Southern charm that Terezi had written into him.  He opened up the box with a single deft movement and popped a cookie into his mouth.  “It is damn criminal how delicious these things are.  It’s a good thing they only make them once a year or the island would be overrun with fat addicts just yearning for a taste.”

            “I really don’t think—”

            “Okay, how about this,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially, crossing the threshold into the house.  “Maybe your owner doesn’t want any, but how about you?”

            “M-me?”

            “Don’t you get any spending money?”

            Looking confused, the Leo shook her head.  “The Doctor doesn’t give us any.”

            Dave shook his head regretfully.  “That is a damn shame.  Maybe we could talk about your owner.  Over cookies.”  Dave called this tactic aggressive smooth-talking.  While he charmcoerced the maid into having a fearlunchdate, Terezi and Jake slunk into the house.

            “You go left,” Terezi said, “and I’ll go right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look, I’m a filthy fucking liar, no one was kicked in the bulge. I’ll make the actual bulge-kicking in the next chapter particularly epic. My problem as a writer is that I always manage to stretch out my chapters until they are much longer than they should have been. Basically nothing happened here, and I’m sorry.   
>  The whole deal with Jake started off as a single bishounen anime joke and somehow snowballed into cross-dressing and homoeroticism. What the fuck, me? And I’m not trying to tease Neville/Jake, it was just an homage to Baka and Test, in which there is a male character who looks exactly like a very pretty girl and is often coerced into cross-dressing, and all the boys openly wish he was a girl. This joke took far too long to explain and is therefore a failure, I apologize.  
>  My goal with this fic is to address the problems inherent in robot stories and monster anime. Human/android relationships, friendship and slavery, can programmed love ever be the same as the real deal? What about that guy from Pokémon who left his Charmander OUT IN THE RAIN TO DIE? WHY DIDN’T HE GO TO POKéJAIL?? And so on. However, I will not dwell on these issues, they will merely be addressed. My logic is that the protagonists are children; those are things that they might encounter in their everyday lives, but the people that actually care will be adults arguing about these things in court and in the senate. There will be hints of HUGE things going on in the background in civil rights, politics, religion, et cetera, and the kids will only ever get into a trickle of that.  
>  Before the next chapter of this goes up, I promise to get in another Thief of Prospit. And I’m really starting to miss Azure Conspiracies, so I might update that soon too, having just been hit a touch of inspiration, but no promises. Hmm. I’m assuming that most of the people who actually read this are already my fans and therefore know what the fuck I’m talking about?  
>  Listenin’ to Cascade as I finish up. I wonder what Neville’s title would be if he were in canon, because frankly I can’t think of anything.


	7. The Calmasis Affair

            I stabbed Aranea so hard she exploded.  “Bugger,” she muttered, just as Vriska shouted, “Motherfucker!” hurling a barrage of energy balls at me.  They weren’t strong enough to kill, but I was left stunned long enough for her to punt me off the stage.  She snickered evilly, then stopped.  “Why are you smiling?” she growled.

            “I know something you don’t,” I said, keeping my voice even.

            “What!?” she snapped.

            “I…AM NOT LEFT HANDED,” I said, adjusting the handedness of my smart-controller, unleashing a furious six hit aerial combo culminating is a fully charged FUS-RO-DAH that blew away my troll’s last remaining stock.  We were playing Smash Brothers on Jake’s TV, in case you were wondering.  The pair of Scorpios were on a team against me.  “C’mon, I’ve got to be better than you at something,” I said, trying to sound modest while Vriska fumed at the TV.  We do have TVs, in case you’re a confused time traveler, little black hologram projectors with sticky feet that produce two-dimensional images.  You’d think they’d be redundant thanks to the AR, and they are.  It’s all business and politics and blah, blah, blah.

            “I wonder what the others are up to,” said Aranea, sounding bored.  Ah, yes, we were over here trying to distract her while Jake and Terezi were out looking for her original owner.  Damn, me and Vriska used to do things, now we’re just sitting here making cartoon characters smash each other with enormous hammers.  Meh, fair trade.

           

            With cat-like tread, Terezi made her way through the spacious manor.  It was irritating to have to do it without Dave to be her eyes, but such was life.  She’d gotten around just fine for most of her life without him, and she would do it now.  Of course, having relied on Dave for almost a year, she’d lost a touch of her finesse.  She only heard the sound of breathing coming from the room just as she walked in front of the open door.  “What are you doing in my house?” Intoned a calm, androgynous voice.

            Shit, thought Terezi.  “Selling cookies,” she said.  “The door was open.  Sorry.”

            “I’m sure,” said the voice.  Terezi decided the timbre was male.  “Well, get in here, then.”  Er….

            Terezi produced the one box she had been carrying.  “This is the last one, see—”

            “Don’t you lot take orders though?”  Dammit now, the way the voice went up at the end there was completely feminine.  And what’s worse, the person kept dropping Englishisms even though their accent sounded American.  Terezi had no idea what to think.

            “Yeah,” Terezi muttered.  Having never actually been a Tangle Buddy, she had no idea how the damn cookie thing worked.

            “Well, let’s see them!” said the person cheerily.  Terezi did nothing.  “They’re right on the back of the box,” a hint of suspicion crept into his (?) voice.

            “I’m new,” Terezi said with a squeamish smile.

            The other person’s breathing became tense and they drummed their fingers on the table.  “If that’s true, then you’re wearing the wrong color scarf.”

            Hastily Terezi did the only thing she could think of.  She played the disability card.  Terezi thought of it as a personal failure to have to resort to it but damn if it hadn’t worked every time she’d played it.  She started tearing up and unleashed the hiccupping sob that had won her a standing ovation at the school play last fall.  “Can’t you see I’m _blind_!?  You are such a mean insensitive person!  I put on my sister’s old scarf by accident and you think I’m…up to something?”  She turned on her heel to rush out of the room, expertly dropping her cane in front of her feet and tripping herself up.  She knelt in the doorway and cried some more.

            The person rushed up from behind their desk (she could tell there was a desk because of the way the person’s footsteps echoed).  Dammit, their carriage was male, but when they approached, she couldn’t tell if it was really manly perfume or really girly cologne that she was smelling.  The person interpreted her sniffing as more crying, thankfully.  “Don’t cry love, I’ll buy fifty boxes!  How’s that?”

            Terezi sniffed.  “Okay….”  The guy (?) seemed to be too nice to have been the one who turned Aranea out, but she had to be sure.  This would be a good opportunity to find out if s/he was hiding anything nefarious.  And also their gender.  And make some money too why not?

            As the person filled out the form, Terezi started to say, “Well mi—” and that’s as far as she got.

            “Doctor,” said the person.  God fucking dammit that could be anything.  “Dr. Calmasis,” the doctor offered his or her hand to shake.  It was neither particularly warm nor soft, not very big or very delicate, the hands of a person whose work requires skill and finesse but is very labor unintensive.  Jesus Christ, would Terezi just have to go ahead and ask?  Wait, there was something important she needed to do.

            “So, how do you feel about troll battles?”  Terezi asked as innocently as she could.  Just a little girl trying small conversation, that’s right.

            There was a ruffling of cloth as if the doctor had shrugged, then s/he cursed under his or her breath and apologized.  “I don’t feel particularly strongly one way or another.  Lynette and I don’t really battle.”

            “Lynette?  Is that the maid?”  Shit.

            “I thought you’d come in through an open door?”  The doctor asked, sounding suspicious again.  Thinking quickly, “I live nearby,” Terezi said.  "My mom says you have a maid.  A pretty Leo?  I thought you just rented them out like everyone else.”  She turned her attention on her link to Dave.  _Ask her if Doctor Calmasis is really her owner,_ she said.  She heard a soft purring through his ears and a soft warmness against his skin, and dare not look through his eyes.  _And whatever it is you’re doing with her stop it, stop it!_

            _Ballroom dancing,_ said Dave.  _You know you’re my only one_.

            _Fuck off,_ said Terezi, blushing, finally hearing the jaunty music.

            “No, she’s mine,” said the doctor, scratching out another line onto the order form.  “I was lucky enough to get such a great Leo.”

            Through Dave’s ears, she heard, “Yes he is, the doctor and I have been together for years,” followed by more contented purring.  _She’s going to get the wrong idea, the skank!_

            “But what if she weren’t so great?”  Terezi asked, curling her mouth as if to say that she was just making casual conversation.  “What if her personality was just so contrary to her built in capabilities that she was useless for what you wanted her for?  Like, say, if she acted like a Scorpio?”

            Calmasis chuckled.  “That’ll be the day.  I suppose I’d just take her out behind the shed and….”  Calmasis chuckled again, and didn’t sound so friendly.

 

            “You’re pretty,” said the kid with a crooked smile.  Jake smiled down at him, a really pained expression.  The kid was adorable, about eleven or twelve, with wheat colored hair and huge green eyes.

            “Than you,” Jake squeaked.  “What’s your name?”

            “Cal,” said the kid.  Jake couldn’t be quite sure of the gender, but decided it was a boy from the name.  Maybe.

            “How old are you?” Jake asked, mussing the kid’s hair.

            “Twelve,” only two years younger than Jake himself, but he looked like some cherubic baby angel thing.  Oh, and this is how I found out the bastard was older than me, and not a citizen.  I mean, I’d guessed he wasn’t from around here by his accent, but I figured he was British or something but he’s actually from Washington.  What the fuck?  I digress.  “Are you selling cookies?” He, the kid, asked with a flutter of his big girlish lashes.

            “Yes….” Said Jake.

            “I’ll buy some if you give me a hug!”  It seemed an innocent enough request and Jake was about to agree when he got a call from Dave.

            “Hey, yo, politeness says I shouldn’t talk to you but desperate times and I don’t give a fuck—” he struggled with something offscreen and there was a feline yowling.  “Seriously come help me out before Terezi shows up, she’s got our guy we just need to call the cops but this crazy Leo is all up in my grill—”

            At this moment the child groped Jake inappropriately.  “You little rapscallion!” Jake shouted, in his real voice, stunning the kid into immobility.  Affecting a female voice again, he said “That is _not_ how you treat a lady!” and backhanded the kid before running off.

            He met up with Terezi and Dave at the door, the latter of which had some dark green smears on his face and neck.  Jake snickered.  “I suppose that Leo was something of a cougar, eh?”

            “Shut the fuck up,” Dave muttered.  “I’m traumatized.  I’ll need therapy for life.  Or a good hard-reset might work.”

            “Tch, fuck that,” said Terezi, caressing the troll’s shoulder, “I’m going to melt you down into slag,” she said, with the implication that she meant something entirely different.  She kissed the corner of his mouth, right there in front of Jake, where other people might have seen.  And then the three of them ran off as fast as their legs could carry them.

 

            What did you think we were going to do?  We told Terezi’s mother.  The place was crawling in Admins within the hour.  “That creepy Doctor is going to pay so hard for his crimes,” Terezi snickered to herself as she made Dave look out her window.  “I can almost taste his anguish!  Or hers.  Whatever he or she turned out to be—OH!”  She turned around to face us; of course I was present for the momentous occasion.  “You guys, I made the AR take a picture!”

            “So?” I asked.  I was in a sulky mood; the Admins had needed to take Aranea as well.  She was down there right now, in one of those police cars, waiting to meet her tormentor again.  At least Jake was with her.  By the end of the day, she’d be his troll, not this allegedly creepy doctor’s.

            “So you’re going to look at it for me and tell me if it’s a dude or not!”  She shouted, stamping her feet.

            Vriska smirked.  “You can’t even tell if something is a dude?  It’s easy, you just have to—”

            “Vriska, no,” I said, unenthusiastically.

            “What?” she snapped.  “I was going to say—”

            “Something lewd and sexual?” I asked.

            “Yeaaaaaaaah,” she said tentatively.

            “Then no,” I said with an air of finality.

            Terezi conjured up the picture.  Jesus Christ.  The doctor was clean-shaven, with white-blonde hair, big green eyes, and long, curly lashes.  And I sure as fuck couldn’t tell you their gender, and that’s what I told Terezi.  “Dammit!”  She punched the wall in frustration.

           

            Terezi’s mom came home after midnight, looking very haggard.  Terezi was waiting for her in the living room.  “What’s wrong?” She asked.

            “The case is more complicated than we thought,” said Captain Pyrope, wiping her brow and setting herself down on the sofa (I almost wrote ‘Mrs. Pyrope’, but my editor, who was looming over my shoulder at the time, elbowed me in the ribs and set me straight; she’s been hanging out with Vriska too much).  Latula ran off to get her a beer.  She accepted it and drank very slowly.  “First of all,” she said, “Dr. Calmasis is a fine young person.  Aranea belonged to the doctor’s ward, Caliborn.”

            Terezi blinked.  “Huh?”

            Dave muttered, flatly, “What.”

            The chief nodded.  “I know, he’s only twelve.  He bought her from an illegal hatchery.  Aranea didn’t even know because she couldn’t tell the difference, having never been to the real one.”

            “Wait,” said Terezi, sounding worried. “What are you going to do with her then?  If she’s not, like, a _real_ troll—”

            “We raided the hatchery this afternoon,” Captain Pyrope said.  “It was in the warehouse district, just a few blocks from where you ran off to the other day.  Everyone was gone but they left their equipment behind.  They were using the most up to date equipment and materials.  Everything was kosher.  For all intents and purposes, Aranea is a real troll.”  She finished her drink and laid back, finally relaxing.  “We’re going to run some tests, make sure she doesn’t have any _surprises_ on her.  But if not,” she finished, “she’ll be transferred over to Jake in the morning.” 

            Terezi squinted, or rather had Dave squint.  “Are you intentionally using gender neutral terms to describe the doctor?” She asked accusingly.

            The chief smirked.  “You want to be an Admin?  Figure it out for yourself.  Now, to bed with you.”

            Terezi cursed and ran off to bed.  Then she called me and Jake with the news.

            Now I’m happy for Jake and Aranea, of course, but the idea of someone making counterfeit trolls is deeply unsettling to me.  They’re already artificial humans.  Imagine being a cheap knock-off _of_ an artificial human?  I told them not to bring it up in front of her.  Lord knows what this might do to someone’s self-esteem.

 

            Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with Aranea.  We had a celebration over at Jake’s house in one of the more middling neighborhoods.  His dad looked a bit like a Greek H. G. Welles and had a big, dramatic voice like what Sir Ian McKellan must have sounded like when he was younger, if he’d been American.  He kept using archaic slang like it was going out of style.  Jake's mother was a bit younger than his father.  She very pretty lady, with delicate features, very long, very blonde hair, Jake’s exact eyes, and a British accent.  It was easy to see how the combined product of the two of them equaled Jake.  The two of them kept getting into very polite, very British arguments.

            “Honestly dear, you can’t experiment on these children,” she said, arms crossed.

            “It’s not an experiment darling,” he said, with a very Jakish smile.  “I’m not going to force them to eat _balut_.  I’m just going to leave them here on the table and if they should happen to—”

            “I’m not about to allow you to gently lower a basketful of chicken embryos onto my nice clean table,” she said.

            He dropped the basket unceremoniously onto the table.  “You and I are going to have words, English,” she said, dragging him away by his ear.

            “You’re English too since you married me darling,” he reminded her.  “And technically you were before that too.”

            “You know I don’t allow puns in my house.”  Vriska reached over and grabbed an egg.  “Bottoms up,” she said, sucking out the embryo inside as everyone gagged.

            Of course, there isn’t much to say about this now.  We had fun, but it’s not fun to read about people having fun.  I can tell you how happy and Aranea and Jake looked sitting together, arm-in-arm, and I swear I saw devotion in their eyes, and I wondered if they were going to turn out like Dave and Terezi.  Damn, do you know how weird it is to be the only normal person in a group? 

            After having a meal of Chinese takeout that Jake’s mother was gracious enough to order for us, we went out back and discussed battles.  We hadn’t had one in ages and decided on a brief sparring session.  Dave and Terezi wiped the floor with us.  Again.

            “Chamberlains,” Dave said, “you need to step up your game.” 

            Terezi clarified, “just flailing around until you get a good roll isn’t going to win you anything.”  She snapped her fingers.  “Dave, give them your extra sword.”

            He pulled something like a kitchen-knife handle out of his back-pocket, and with the push of a button it unfolded into a dull grey, single-edge blade that almost looked real.  “You use a sword when you transform, so you might as well learn to use it,” he said, handing it to Vriska. 

            She smirked.  “Giving me a weapon is the biggest mistake of your life so far, Dave.”  They wiped the floor with us again.

 

            In the dead of the night, Caliborn wandered the backyard, as he often did when distraught.  The stupid Admins had fined his stupid legal guardian and then the stupid sod had gone and grounded him!  It was all Aranea’s fault.  He’d get his revenge someday.  When he got his proper troll in a few months, he’d be careful and make sure she wasn’t an idiot.  He kicked a rock into the swimming pool.  Something rustled in the bushes nearby.  Probably just a cat.  He picked up a stick and readied to throw it, only for a powerful hand to grip his wrist, nearly crushing it.  The cat, a big white one, yowled in fear as it jumped out of the bush and ran across the yard, up the fence, and away. 

            “As if I’d ever be that noisy,” said a high feminine voice, dripping with malice.  “So you like to beat up trolls, eh kid?”  Caliborn turned, slowly, with dread building up in his stomach.  He screamed.

            “I’m sorry Aranea!” he shouted.  “I’ll treat you better I promise!”

            Vriska raised an eyebrow.  “Aranea?  She wishes!”

            Then she kicked him in the shame globes, dropping him in the pool, and disappeared into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a short one, sorry. Of course, the next one’s coming up later today because I wrote them out of order. I think the conclusion of this arc was a bit sub-par, but the next one is a bit of a doozy, not to toot my own horn or anything *toot*. Oops, sorry. I came up with this arc before Lordlyhour’s suggestions for the character involved, which will be implemented at a later arc. Not really much to say, sorry.


	8. Rosemary (That's for Remebrance)

            I’m only writing this chapter because my editor said it would be cathartic.  Bear in mind that memory is a tricky thing.  I may also have embellished things just a little....

 

            “Oh honey, remember your best friend from when you were little?”  Mom asked as I busily grappled with Vriska over the TV remote.  It was late June and after an unseasonably warm autumn the weather was starting to turn (remember American friends; this is the _Southern_ hemisphere), so after a few weeks of practicing the ancient and deadly art of swordplay, we had spent most of the day inside, figuring we’d earned it and it was cold, dammit.  I was trying to watch the Discovery Channel but a certain, to quote my mother “special girl”, had just discovered some dumbass pirate anime from the early 2000s and the damn thing was having a marathon during _MythBusters: The Next Generation_.

            “Let me just tell you what happens,” I snapped, pulling the remote with both hands, “It goes on for like three hundred episodes without any actual piracy taking place, and then the treasure turns out to be friendship or some bullshit.”

            Vriska growled, baring her fangs at me, “It’s still better than watching some fat Americans talk about myths you never heard of and brag about all the explosions they cause even though all they do is set things on fire after an hour of bullshit pseudo-science!”

            I gasped in horror.  “Take that back!” I snarled.

            “Okay,” she said, suddenly cheerful, flicking her wrist and simultaneously freeing the remote from my grasp and sending me tumbling to the floor with her lousy troll strength.

            Mom looked down at me, smiling sweetly as per usual.  “Do you remember your best friend from when you were little?” She repeated emphasizing each syllable very slightly as if dealing with a child that she knows full well is intelligent but is also a paradoxically slow thinker.  Wait, shit.

            “Um, some…girl I think?  She had really long hair…?”  I could only barely remember actually interacting with this alleged ‘best friend’.  Most of my memories of her were just memories of mom telling me how cute we were, that and a wrinkly old photograph taken by the beach.  A cute bucktoothed little girl with black hair to the floor grinned happily at the camera from the top of a rock.  I on the other hand, looked miserable, probably because it was dated mid-July and taken at the beach and therefore ungodly cold, and also because I had probably just fallen off the same rock.  It seems to be a parent’s prerogative to remember every dumb little thing their kids do so that they themselves don’t have to, each generation acting as a living flash drive for the next.

            Mom clicked her tongue at me.  “You don’t remember Jade Harley?  You awful boy, the two of you were inseparable back then.  Then she moved away to America and you cried for weeks.”  I will take a moment to say that having a troll is much better than having a sibling, because while a sibling would at this point have teased me relentlessly about a toddlerhood ‘girlfriend’, Vriska was too wrapped up in her shitty animes to notice, and likely wouldn’t have cared even if she wasn’t.

            “Inseparable for what,” I deadpanned, “all of preschool and part of kindergarten?”

            “Of course!” she answered, looking scandalized.  “Those are very important years in your development.”

            I sighed.  What was the point of this?  “What’s the point of this?” I asked, a bit more roughly than I should have, obviously, or else my mom wouldn’t have flicked me in the ear.  “Ow.”

            “I saw her in town just a little while ago!” She said, face turning into an emoticon for smiling.  “She came back this December to get her troll, and she’s been meaning to look us up but her grandfather is ill, the poor dear.  Surely you remember Mr. Harley?”  I vaguely recall some Teddy Roosevelt lookalike taking us all up in his private zeppelin to tour the island.  I think I said that it looked like a giant snowflake and everyone laughed.  Well, it does; the UN expanded the original island into a perfect hexagon and created six artificial harbors.  Combined with the whole crystal-spires-and-togas deal the city center has going on for it, what else would I think it looked like?

            I thought all this, but instead I just nodded.  “Yes, he’s the founder of SkaiaNet Laboratories,” mom said.  "The ones that built the trolls?”

            “I guess that’s nice,” I said, slowly.  Mom beamed at me.  “Do you want me to…go see her?”  She nodded.  “It’s going to be kind of awkward.”  She shrugged, still beaming.  Wait.

            “Do you…do you want me to be gold-digger?”

            “Mind your language young man.,” she warned, _still_ beaming.  Although her expression had not changed at all, her smile was now exuding an aura of menace.

            “No,” I said, standing up to my full height, still a full head shorter than her, “You’re trying to pimp me out!”

            Quick as a striking viper, she grabbed hold of my ear.  “All I’m saying is it would be nice for you two to reacquaint yourselves,” she tightened her grip slightly.  “Jade is absolutely in favor of the idea by the way.  She’s really excited to see you again.”  She twisted a little, forcing me to adjust my posture.  “She’s a total sweetheart, _and_ she’s grown up to be quite the looker.”

            “Who even says things like that anymore?” Mom tweaked my ear a bit more and I shut up.  “Okay fine!”  She finally let go and I relished my freedom.

            “One hour from now,” she said.  What? “Ashen Park.”

            “Seriously?”  Mom nodded with a degree of extreme finality.  “Oy vey.  Vriska get your shit—”

            Mom give me another ear-pulling for my language and Vriska said, “I ain’t going on your dates with you,” she stretched out on the couch luxuriantly.  “Plus I have elastic pirates to watch.”

            “Mom—”

            She giggled, “Let Vriska watch her cartoons honey.  It’s been a big month for her.” It’s been a big month for me too, probably bigger since I don’t have any trollish superpowers, but I had already agreed to the thing.  I sighed.

           

            Mom made me take a shower and I had to talk her down from putting me in a tuxedo to just my best button-down shirt.  “You should at least wear a suit,” she said, annoyed.  “Your friend Dave looks so handsome in his suits.”

            “Dave is a troll mom,” I snapped, trying not to _sound_ snappish for the sake of my ear.  “Terezi dresses him like that because of her weird….” I almost said ‘fetishes’ but I reminded myself that I promised I wouldn’t judge and it’s probably supposed to be a secret, “… _ness_.  Weird _ness_.”

            “You mean ‘taste’, honey?” she smirked.  Well, as close as my mom can come to smirking.  It was still a bad burn and I couldn’t think of a response.  I compromised by wearing a nice navy-blue blazer; she said that at least now I looked like I was trying.  “Here,” she said, slipping a heavy coin into my shirt pocket.  “Do something nice together!”  As we readied to leave, mom wrapped this awkward pink and purple scarf around my neck.  Before I could protest, Orpheus swaggered into the kitchen from his den in the backyard, halting all other thoughts from me.  He glared at me, purple eyes glinting with malevolence.  “We’ll meet you in the car Orphie,” mom said, and he nodded, bared his fangs at me, and headed for the garage.

            “Don’t tell me you’ve got him chaperoning,” I said, a chill running up my spine that had nothing to do with the weather.  Turning I said, “Vriska, are you _absolutely sure_ you don’t want to come?  Ashen Park!  It’s amazing!  We’ll go on the Ferris wheel!  I’ll let you eat more than one thing!”

            She looked at me.  “Gum.  Gum.  Hammer!”  Her response, punctuated by turning up the obnoxious theme music, was as clear as if it had actually made grammatical sense.

            Mom giggled.  “I’m just taking him in for some routine maintenance honey.  Ashen Park is on the way, so we’ll be dropping you off.”  I uttered a brief prayer of thanks to every god I’ve ever heard of, including the ones from works of speculative fiction.  Cthulhu phtagn!

           

            The ride was uneventful, other than Orpheus breathing down my neck, and thankfully short, since all neighborhoods in Alternia are within walking distance of everything of use.  Our quarter of the city was home to Ashen Park, one of four big, touristy parks.  There were a couple of rides, but not enough to make it a theme park.  The main draws were the botanical gardens and the world’s second tallest Ferris wheel.  The other parks had complimentary attractions, zoological gardens, the world’s biggest carousel, an aquarium, a museum, and a suspended MagLev that connects the four, but Ashen was generally considered to be the best one.

            I was pushed from the passenger seat right in front of the grey iron gates, gothic curlicues and stylized clubs making them look whimsical rather than uninviting.  The sky above was just as grey but not nearly as inviting, and it was damn chilly.  “Looks like rain,” I said.  Mom threw me an umbrella and a bouquet of daffodils and drove away, flashing me a winning smile.  Orpheus looked vaguely happy to see me go, as happy as the bastard ever gets.

            Wait.  Where the Hell was I supposed to meet her?  I considered calling mom to ask her, but then I realized that if I didn’t I wouldn’t have to go through an hour of awkward conversation trying to ‘catch up’ with someone I haven’t seen since I achieved sentience.  Instead I just wandered around for a bit, avoiding the obvious places in case someone recognized me.  Mind you, I didn’t believe that Jade would recognize me if she saw me for all that she claimed to remember me, but it was actually nice _not_ having company for once.  I mean, and one of us will die before she hears me say it, I have come to enjoy Vriska’s company and I wouldn’t trade her for any troll in the world with the possible exception of Aranea, but I don’t think I’ve been alone for more than ten minutes since my birthday, except for when I was waiting for the admins down at 413.  That’s a long fucking time without room to think.  I like thinking, I enjoy thinking.  You’ve noticed how I tend to go off on philosophical tangents at least once per adventure?  That’s how I used to be like _all the time_.  It was great. 

            I sat down on a bench with my thoughts for a good ten minutes, and only then noticed the girl dozing under a pear tree opposite me.  She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way, and she had a tiny white flower in her long black hair.  I couldn’t tell from her posture but her hair might have gone down below her knees, maybe even lower.  It was clearly cared for too; she must spend hours just combing it.  I remember she was wearing a long denim skirt that buttoned up at the side, a black turtle-neck with a big yellow flower on it, and a sort of weird pillbox cap.

            Then she either woke up, or maybe she hadn’t actually been asleep at all and simply noticed me looking, and gave me a warm smile that made her big green eyes light up.  I couldn’t help but smile back.  Then she got up and ran over to me and gave me a hug that drove the breath right out of my lungs.  “Neville!” 

            Huh?  No fucking way.  That’s what I wanted to say, but what came out was just a random assortment of sounds that I won’t dignify by typing out.  “Sorry!  I don’t know my own strength,” she said, pulling back a little.

            “So I guess you just never cut your hair, huh Jade?”  She laughed and smacked me on the shoulder.  She really didn’t know her own strength.  “I, uh, hear you got a troll a few months back.  Where is he?” I said, looking around. There was no one.

            “Oh, it’s a she,” Jade clarified.  “I know, most people get one that’s the opposite gender,” I was unaware of this but it’s actually _intentional,_ fuck, “but she’s the best troll ever!  But she likes to do her own thing now and again, so she didn’t come.”

            I nodded.  The conversation lulled for a few seconds.  I realized she was still holding my arms and gave a sort of shrug to indicate she should let me go.  She didn’t get it.  “Um, so why did you want to meet me here?  You could have just called or something.”

            “It was your mom’s idea.”  Ah, mom.  Jade smiled again.  I noticed she didn’t open her mouth when she smiled; we’d both had buck teeth when we were little, this sort of thing’s instinctual after you get to elementary school and everyone starts calling you names when you smile. “She’s such a sweetheart,” said Jade.  Ah, people who call others ‘sweetheart’.

            I laughed awkwardly.  “You know, uh, she seems to be under the impression that this is a date.”  Jade cocked her head.  “She gave me flowers.”  She blinked, coloring slightly.  “To give you,” I clarified helpfully.  She finally noticed she was still holding my arms and let go abruptly.  Then she forced a laugh.  At least now I wasn’t the only one who felt awkward.

            “Well, that’s really silly of her,” she said.

            “Yes,” I agreed, handing her the flowers.  She looked at them as if considering what to do with them, and decided to smell them. “Let’s go do something,” she said.

 

            It’s not that I had a bad time at first; it’s just that I was unsure of whether to treat Jade as a new friend, which for all intents and purposes she was, or an old one, which she technically was too.  I could tell she was also having this problem, but made up for it with her enthusiasm and genuine interest in rekindling our friendship.  For a while our conversation was something like:

            “Do you remember X?”

            “Nope, sorry.”

            And then Jade would tell me all about X.  Jade was a good talker, but I was getting tired of taking a stroll down a Memory Lane where the memories were mostly someone else’s.  Finally, I took initiative.  “So, what’s America like?” I asked.

            “It’s so weird to hear you say that,” she said, laughing, “because you Alternians all sound like Americans already.”  She thought a moment.  “Well, it was cold when I left,” not quite what I’d expected to hear, but okay, “and it’s even colder now I’ve arrived, and it’s been getting colder ever since and now I don’t know when I’ll ever be warm again.”

            I smirked.  “Winter is just starting.  You thought it was cold before?  And the worst part is they do the best they can to keep it from ever snowing because that’s unproductive.  Isn’t that like, cartoonishly evil?”

            She looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head, and then busted out laughing.  “Oh yeah, the stupid weather thing!”

            We went into the botanical gardens because they have a huge greenhouse that would probably be warm, and Jade proceeded to try to name every plant in it.  I could only identify a few; willows, cypresses, tulips, marigolds, lilies, wormwood—

            “And this is a snowdrop,” said Jade, pointing at the little white thing in her hair.  “It’s not real though, I just found it on the ground somewhere.”  I guess that’s that mystery solved.  What was that flower in Jade’s hair?  What’s the purpose of it?  It’s a snowdrop and it doesn’t mean anything.  It’s not like there’s a whole language of flowers or some stupid bullshit.

            After that Jade wanted to go ride the Ferris wheel, so we left the hothouse and were immediately hit by the cold like a goddamn sledgehammer.  Jade’s teeth chattered and she shivered like a cartoon puppy.  Partly out of chivalry and partly out of wanting to rid myself of the stupid thing, I gave her my scarf.  Mom wouldn’t even be mad; it was the perfect crime.

            The Ashen Ferris is huge, I hope you understand.  It’s not one of those things with a rickety little two-seater carriage where teenagers can snuggle up against each other.  It takes about forty-five minutes to make a full rotation.  It has huge, fully contained capsules that can seat like thirty people.  The capsules are bubbles of high-strength transparent polymer suspended in a cage of steel so you can look almost everywhere around you.  Remember that Alternia is consistently rated one of the most beautiful cities of the world, so therefore this thing that lets you see most of it at once is _the_ biggest sole tourist attraction on the island, so generally speaking you will be riding with a whole posse of people.

            Yet it seemed that destiny had conspired so that Jade and I had a whole capsule to ourselves; there were exactly thirty people ahead of us and not a soul behind.  Somehow I wondered if mom had anything to do with this, but that was silly.  Right?  It was probably just that it was so bastard cold.  When the next capsule came down and disgorged its passengers, I plopped down the hundred-piece mom gave me at the automated ticket counter, a big blue coin with an AR projected sequence of flashing colors.  “Two please,” I said, and the pattern of lights simplified from seven different hues to just static white and orange as the numerical value on the face of it decreased significantly.  “We can still get a hotdog after, nice,” I said.  They must have lowered the prices due to bad business today. 

            Jade was agog.

            “I know it’s really expensive—”

            She shook her head.  “The money here is so weird!  I’m still not used to it!”

            I looked at my boondollar coin.  Each one had a maximum value but it could be decreased with purchases, functioning as its own change.  Why not?  All money has arbitrarily assigned value, let’s play with the concept.  That’s probably why they look so much like poker chips.  Or toys.  “What’s American money look like?”

            “Grey and green with dead guys on it,” she said, producing a few bills.  “Here, for the scarf.” 

            “There’s a lot more here than what the stupid scarf cost—”

            She shook her head.  “Just take it; I have more than I know what to do with.”  I sighed and pocketed the money, figuring that mom _had_ pimped me out.

            Jade was enraptured by the city as we rose higher and higher into the air, face not quite pressed against the ‘glass’, fogging it up with her breath, asking me to tell her what every interesting building or whatnot was for.  “Those are the three other main parks,” I said, “Flushed, Pale, and Caliginous.  For some reason they’re all facial expressions?”  I pointed over to a familiar neighborhood whose strange rock formations made it look like the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland.  “That neighborhood is where most of the bigwigs that built or funded this city settled.  Prosperity something or other—”

            Jade laughed at me.  “I know about that place; I live there.  You’d think the founder of SkaiaNet counts as a bigwig, right?”

            Of course.  Derp.  I smacked my head against the polymer, making a hollow _*thunk*_.  “Don’t do that!”  Jade shouted, going pale.  Did she think I was going to break the capsule?  The stupid things could survive a nuclear war.  I did it again, hard enough to shake the thing just slightly and she hit me.  “Fuckass,” she muttered, looking away pointedly. 

            I laughed and sat down on the weird oblong bench in the center.  “Fuckass?  Is that what all the cool-kids in California call each other while sipping iced coffees on their surfboards?”

            Jade giggled.  “I wouldn’t know; we lived in Washington.”

            I’d ridden this thing a couple of times before, two or three times with my parents, once with Vriska just after the warehouse, and again two weeks ago with the whole gang.  It was still early evening, but the clouds overhead were getting so dark that by the time we were halfway up they turned on the lights anyway.  The capsules don’t have any internal lighting, but the whole Ashen Ferris was lit by AR projections, spirographs and galaxies and mandalas and slogans and things like fireworks going off, going from 2D to 3D and back again completely at random.  This was a sight in and of itself, but it couldn’t be fully enjoyed from inside, and the city was all old news to me.

            “Did you think about me at all?”  She asked out of the blue.  From any other girl, this might have been the beginning of some anguished declaration of love.  But it was blindingly obvious that Jade wasn’t any other girl; if she ever made an anguished declaration of anything, it would be a goddamn spectacle.  Oceans rising, cities falling, volcanoes erupting.  Jade was just legitimately curious.

            “Honestly,” I said, “Hardly at all.  I remember being sad when you left, but I barely ever thought about you until today, when mom asked me if I still remembered you.  And ever since,” I finished, “it’s been coming back to me, in little trickles.”

            “Hmph,” she huffed in faux annoyance.  “I thought about you a lot.  I have an excellent memory.”

            I smirked.  “I recall you wearing colored strings on your fingers so you didn’t forget anything, and then you’d forget what the strings were supposed to mean?”

            “Shut up,” she said, “I started eating rosemary.”

            “Huh?”

            “It’s for remembrance.”

            “I hated _Hamlet_.  _Titus Andronicus_ , that’s my play.  Still, I’m sure that in some higher dimension, Shakespeare just did a rimshot for you on his drum set.”

            “Get up here and look at the city with me!”  She demanded, and I strode over with fake boredom.  We’d nearly reached the top by now.

            “Holy shit,” I said.  Not because the city looked goddamn beautiful, which it did.  The delicate art-deco spires topped with gigantic spheres looked like something from another world, mixed in with more exotic structures like fantasy castles that looked as if they’d been designed by children with infinite budgets and carpenter robots, and from here you could almost make out the wonderful snowflake shape the island had been given, and all the colors blended together into something spectacular.  But far more interesting that that big artificial snowflake was the tiny natural one that had stuck to the outside of the capsule.  Maybe the bastards at the weather control center had had a change of heart about snow, or maybe the cold front outside the boundaries of their control was just that much stronger than they were.  Whatever the reason, there was a snowflake, and others were beginning to fall.

            “Oh look,” said Jade, “a genuine smile.”  Brightening as if she’d gotten an excellent idea just now, she shook my shoulder.  “Do you want to come over tomorrow?  It’ll be so fun!  You can bring Vriska!  We’ll have a battle!  You can bring your friends too, it’ll be amazing!”

            “Sure,” I said, not really thinking about it.  Too busy watching the falling snow.

 

            Other than that the rest of the ride was uneventful.  By the time we reached the gate, it was properly snowing, and a thin scree of white powder was forming on the ground.  Jade asked, “Do you want me to call our driver?”

            “You rich people and your drivers,” I said, “you can walk anywhere in the city without too much effort.”

            She laughed.  “Suit yourself,” she said and gave me a hug.  Just a quick sisterly hug mind you, but there were immediate calls of ‘aw yeah dawg!’ and ‘way to go Chamberlain!’ from somewhere in the vicinity.  I turned around and what do you know, Jake, Terezi, and their respective trolls are running across the street at us.

            Jade lit up.  “Are those your friends?”

            “No, they’re a gang of vicious thugs,” I said.  “Czech mafia; they absolutely hate me for giving up the Sudetenland even though my policies of appeasement were seen as the most logical course of action at the time.  Let’s go away.”

            She brushed my hand away.  “Don’t be silly.  Czech mafia, honestly,” well, there really _is_ a gang, that _is_ what they call themselves, and they _do_ hate me, if you recall.  It’s just that they’re all in the sixth grade.  “Hi Neville’s friends, I’m Jade Harley!”  There were hasty introductions and Jake kissed her hand.

            “Hey, I don’t know where your mouth’s been,” I said, and they all laughed.  I was being serious, but okay.

            “Yeah Jake,” said Terezi, elbowing him in the ribs.  “Don’t be putting the moves on Neville’s secret girlfriend.”

            “As cliché as it sounds, she’s not my secret girlfriend,” I said.

            “Well not ‘secret’ anymore,” she responded.  “But anyone with eyes can see what’s happening, and even people without them.”  She leered at me over her sunglasses, pale, dead eyes somehow locking onto mine, “Look at you all snappy in your blazer,” I realized Dave was doing the exact same thing behind her so she could see it too, “You know what they say: ‘every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man’.  You guys didn’t even bring your trolls.  Let me guess; forbidden love?”

            “Obviously so,” said Jake.  “Harley?  Of the SkaiaNet Harleys?  Clearly her family would take issue with their precious heiress being courted by a commoner such as our Neville.  It’s as you say, they’ve had to hide their union from even their own trolls.  Like as not, Vriska’s at home thinking he’s off with some other troll and feeling spurned.”

            “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said and just about everything out of your mouth is complete drivel,” I snapped.

            Jade gently nudged me out of the way and laughed nervously.  “We’re actually childhood friends and haven’t seen each other in years—”

            Terezi gasped, shoving past her and pinching my cheek.  “Neville that’s so adorable!  It adds a whole new level of intrigue to your whirlwind romance—”

            I slapped her hand away.  “There’s no romance involved!”

            “Then why, pray tell, did you become so defensive when I kissed the lady’s hand?”  Jake announced as if he were a lawyer playing his trump card.  Appropriately, Terezi gasped, raising her hands up to her cheeks as if to frame the expression.

            “Because I don’t want you to scare her off with your crazy old-fashioned theatrics,” I said.  “Not everyone is as forgiving of weird quirks as we are.  You need to ease new people into your craziness—” At this point Jade collapsed and I barely managed to catch her before she hit the ground.  Everyone “oohed”.

            “Stop oohing!”  I shouted, “Call an ambulance!”

            Jade’s eyes fluttered open.  “No, it’s fine, just help me stand.”  She wrapped her arm around my neck and steadied herself as I gingerly placed mine around her waist.  Everyone ‘oohed’ again.  The motherfuckers.

            “I have narcolepsy,” she explained, coloring slightly as if she were ashamed of it.  Wait.

            “I distinctly recall you having insomnia,” I said.

            “Maybe she has insomnia and thinks it’s narcolepsy,” said Terezi.  “She falls asleep at random because she’s tired and not because she has neurological issues.”

            “Shut up,” I said. 

            Jade laughed and invited them over to her house tomorrow.  “I’ll come pick you all up in our limousine!”

            “Don’t invite them, they’re awful,” I said.

            “Are you being extra sulky because Vriska isn’t here and you need to make up for it?”  Terezi asked.  I saw Dave and Aranea whispering to each other.

            “Okay you two,” I said, “we’re all friends here and Jade doesn’t know about troll customs, so if you have something to say, just say it.”  Jade muttered that she’d had one longer than I had but my point stood damn it.

            Aranea grinned at me, little fangs poking over her blue lips.  “We’re just very happy for you two.”  I almost believed that she hadn’t been gossiping viciously.

            Dave raised his fist and held it out to me.  “Chamberlain.  Knucks.”

            I groaned.  “We’re not—”

            He flash-stepped over to me, grabbed my hand, made it into a fist, and bumped his own fist into it, then flash-stepped back before I could even properly react.  “Bastard,” I muttered.

            “I can walk now,” Jade said, “let me go.”  I complied, trying not to seem too happy.  She checked her watch.  I had assumed it was a bracelet made of some precious metal polished to a mirror sheen, about as wide as a boondollar coin, but when she tapped it, both a digital and an analog display lit up, giving her the time.  “Well, I’m going to call my driver anyway Neville,” she said, sounding suddenly very tired.  She pulled off the bracelet and it snapped open, showing it to be thin enough to slit someone’s throat with and fiddled around with the touchscreen.  We all looked on with interest.  I’m sure in the US this was the height of communication, but here she could have just shouted at the AR like we all do.  Still, none of us had ever had a phone.  “If you could just come get me in front of Ashen Park, that would be awesome,” she said, her voice changing slightly, becoming a bit more mature and quiet.  Dad has a cell phone and he does that too, it’s so weird.  Like they’re scared it’ll drop the call if they don’t speak politely.

            We just screwed around and made small talk for a few minutes while her car came around.  My stupid friends gave her their address so that she could pick them up tomorrow, Dave started beatboxing, standard shit.

            “Seriously though, uninvite these guys,” I said.

            “You want some alone time with her?” Dave asked. 

            “Show her how much you’ve grown, eh?”  Terezi continued, wiggling her eyebrows.

            “That you’re not a little boy anymore?” Dave said.

            “Participate in sexual intercourse, wot?” said Jake and everyone glared at him.

            “That’s why,” I said, “you’re all awful and I hate you.”

            “Nooooo, they’re funny and you love them,” said Jade.

            Terezi swung her cane through the air, nearly hitting Jake with it, and leveled the thing at Jade’s chest.  “This girl gets it Chamberlain.  You should marry her and father some children.”

            Fortunately, the car came around just then.  It was not a limo, but a smart looking black thing that looked more suited to carrying members of the secret police than an eccentric heiress.  “You’ll see the limo tomorrow, don’t worry,” she said, waving goodbye.  Then she gave me another rib-crushing hug, and winking at the crowd, a kiss on the cheek, before stepping inside.

            “Shut up,” I snapped preemptively.  I swore not to blush.

            “How was it?” Terezi asked, almost too low to hear.

            “No,” I said, beginning to lose control of my bloodflow.

            “Hey Neville is it getting warmer around here?”  Dave asked.

            “Fuck you,” I turned away from everybody and loosened my shirt collar.

            Terezi grabbed me from the back and cackled into my ear.  “We’re just teasing you, Neville.  Don’t take everything so seriously.”  Whispering, but still speaking loud enough for everyone to hear, she added, “besides, we all know that you’re actually in love with Jake.  You still have those photos don’t you?”  I almost cried but I’m a real man so I didn’t.

           

            After saying goodbye (well actually I said ‘fuck all a y’all’ or something), I went home.

            “How’d it go honey?” Mom asked.  “And where’s your scarf?”  This she asked with a hint of sharpness.

            Defensively, I said “Jade was cold so I gave it to her,” and mom swooped down on me and enveloped me in a hug that did not, in fact, crush my bones.  “I am so proud of you!  Then what happened?”

            “She invited me over to her house tomorrow.”  Mom sniffled.  What?

            “You’re finally going to become a man!”  She held me tight.  “I still remember when you were just a tyke asking me where babies came from—”

            “ _Mother_ ,” I snapped, “Do not continue this thread.  My other friends already gave me the business about Jade.”  I paused for a second and considered.  Going red again, “and we are _just_ friends!”

            I escaped her grasp.  After some requisite pampering and a very rushed summary of the day’s events, I had a quick dinner, then I walked upstairs and went to bed.  Fuck, but I was tired.  “I can sense you telling dad about this,” I warned from the top of the stairs. 

            “And why shouldn’t I?” Mom asked cheerily.  “It’s all so cute!”

            Because then he’ll give me ‘the talk’ in that horribly over-exaggerated way that he does anything important.  God help you if your father is a Shakespearean actor turned anime VA.  You get a fucking three page soliloquy on the nature of good and evil intercut with the finer points of eastern philosophy and _Gurren Lagann_ quotes liberally sprinkled throughout just to get you to take out the trash.  He’ll probably win a fucking Tony award for giving me ‘the talk’. 

            I plopped into bed and lay there a bit, feeling sleep coming over me.  Remembering the last time I slept in clothes, I got back up, changed and turned off the lights, but suddenly I couldn’t sleep.  Don’t you hate it when you feel so tired that you think you’re about to collapse, then as soon as you turn off the lights your eyes snap back open like a monster in a horror movie who’s not _quite_ dead?  What fucking time was it anyway?  “AR, time,” I muttered.  It was 8:20.  “Fuck you AR.”  The display switched off, sort of imploding into a white singularity and disappearing with a crackle of static like an old TV rather than just not being there anymore, as if its feelings were hurt. 

            I think I dozed for a bit.  I was awoken by something warm huddled against me, with an arm across my chest.  “…mom?”

            “Nope,” said Vriska, “sorry to disappoint.”

            “Er….”

            She growled.  “Get your fucking head out of the gutter eh?  You were visibly upset.  I’m comforting you.”  She squeezed and I was once again surprised by the strength in those scrawny arms.  “Now go to sleep.  You’ll get over it.”

            The novelty of the situation kept me from complying.  Instead, I said, “I thought I hid it pretty well, actually.”

            She snorted.  “Maybe from Mrs. Chamberlain—”

            “Is that really what you call her?” 

            “Shush.  I have suprahuman senses and a direct link to your vitals.  You’ve ridden around in my head like it was your own private car.  I think I know you at least as well as your mother, if not better.”

            “How possessive of you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

            “I can feel you brooding,” she snapped.  “Tell me about it, so you can sleep and I can go back to my pirates.”

            “Bugger your pirates,” I said, imitating Jake for a second.  “How much did you hear from when I told mom?”

            “Every damn thing,” she said, exaggeratedly.  “Is that what humans are really like when they’re in love?  It’s so dumb.  Troll romance is much more intricate and complex, like a fine wine compared to some bathtub whiskey,” her voice was getting low and melodic.

            “I’m not in love,” I muttered.  After a few seconds, “infatuated maybe.”

            “Suuuuuuuure,” she said, stroking my hair.

            “What about you,” I said, mustering a bit of energy.  “Pretty random time to be talking about troll romance.  What, you got a thing for Dave?”

            She blew a raspberry.  “He’s cute, but doesn’t fit in any of the quadrants I’d like him in, so he’s _out_.”

            I waited a few seconds for her to elaborate.  “Huh?”

            “Don’t you worry about my stuff, I can handle myself,” she said, going back to her sweet melodic tone.  “I’ve got my eyes on the prize, all eight of them.  I’m not a loser like you, a guy who can’t handle people he cares about understanding him better than he does.”

            Once again I waited for elaboration.  “Huh?”

            Vriska sighed.  “Maybe you’ll understand better in the morning.  After you’ve slept.  I wish I could just make a funny face and you’d fall asleep.  Sadly, such technology does not yet exist.  I checked online the other day for some mods….”

            Around this point I actually did fall asleep.  When I woke up the next morning at around six, proving a certain old adage about the time of one’s rising and falling, Vriska was watching that dumbass show on my TV with the sound turned to 1, sitting like an entranced puppy.  I told you there were like three hundred damn episodes.

           

            Around lunch, Jade called.  She somehow managed to be sitting too close to the AR projector so her face took up the entire frame and she clearly didn’t know where to put her eyes.  “Hey Neville, do you want to come over early to help me set up the place?”

            My mother appeared and I briefly thought she must have flash-stepped across the kitchen.  She shoved me aside and said “Of course he does sweetheart!”  And then they were very cute with each other for like five minutes.  Honestly, Jade should have been her kid instead of me.  Anyway, they arranged for me to get picked up in an hour, then Jade bid me a cheery goodbye and my mom rushed me away to get ready.  “Vriska dear,” she called up the stairs, “come down here and let me put some makeup on you!”

            “Never!’ she shouted.  In vain; within the hour we were both done up like little church-goers.  Vriska looks adorable in a frilly skirt.  “Fuck you,” she said, slugging my arm.  Mom did the shoulder-pinch thing until she calmed down, by which I mean she was now a drooling wreck and I had to half carry her outside.

            The limousine picked us up today.  It was fairly standard limousine faire, about what one would expect from movies and things; red leather seats that faced each other, plush carpeting, a mini-fridge, and a tinted window separating us from the driver.  I sat down and laid Vriska’s head on my lap while she struggled to regain sapience.  I suppose it was the least I could do.  Jade sat down next to me and the car took off.

            Today she was wearing a blue and black dress and a red jacket.  They didn’t quite go to together, but that was part of the charm, really.  She still had on her beret from yesterday, and….Wait.

            “Didn’t you used to wear glasses?”  I asked.

            She laughed.  “You really are remembering things!  I just don’t need them anymore, that’s all.”  I nodded, though I still thought it was weird.  It seemed like all the things I did remember about Jade were no longer true.  Could we really be defined as old friends if at least one of us didn’t know the other at all?

            What I actually said was, “I assumed you just traded them for that hat.”  She giggled, but not as much as I’d hoped.

            “Sooooo, does your mom still think this is a date?” she asked, grinning.  “You’re wearing a full suit and everything.”

            “She did, until I told her you invited my awful friends,” I said.

            “See, it’s a good thing, then!”

            “Yeah, absolutely,” I said, thinking. 

            “And the suit?”

            I made a dismissive motion.  “’Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man’.  Are your parents going to be there?”

            Jade tensed up a little.  “Nooooo, just grandpa.  And he’ll probably be resting most of the time.  He’s very sick,” she muttered.  Well shit, here I go again, messing things up—“So we’ll have the house to ourselves!  That’s fun!”  She was just putting on a brave face.

            Her parents weren’t going to be there?  Wait.  She said she lived with the founder of SkaiaNet.  That was her grandpa.  Why did she live with her grandpa?  Damn my stupid mind, this was going to bug me forever and it was probably nothing and if it _was_ something then it would be bad to bring it up but dammit—

            “What happened to your parents Jade?” I asked.

            A chink appeared in cheery façade.  “You really don’t remember anything, do you?” she said, voice cracking.  And it all hit me.  She’d moved because—

            Because her parents had died in an accident.  We were all so worried, because Jade was supposed to have been with them that day, but she turned out to have just been with her grandpa.  The very last time I saw her, she was asleep in his arms, and she looked so pale and _wasted_.

            I hugged her; she stiffened.  “I’m so, so sorry.”  After a second she hugged me back, and sobbed into my shoulder for a minute.  When she calmed down, I pulled back and looked at her. There was still a tear at the corner of one big green eye, and it sparkled almost like something…unnatural.  She looked a bit like some painting of Shakespeare’s Ophelia I saw once, with such a deep, resigned melancholy that it stuck to your soul.  Now that I’m a bit older, I—well, I’m not that much older and would probably have done the same thing I did this time, but I would have said something cool, like, “I hated _Hamlet_ ,” before I cupped her face and kissed her.

            If I had, then it definitely would have delayed the kiss a few seconds, and _not_ just as we hit a speedbump, probably the only one of its kind in the city, and things may have _actually_ been different.  Vriska rolled off onto the ground, shouting in pain, Jade’s teeth clicked against mine and it hurt like a bastard, and I feel over backward with her on top of me.  I know, it’s a perfect romcom situation, and nothing at all like a twist, except that her hat fell off.  Underneath were a pair of big, fluffy white dog-ears.

            She looked at me with something like betrayal.  “I think you should get out of my car.”

            I shook my head.  Vriska groaned from her place on the floor.  Jade turned to the tinted window and opened her mouth to shout for the driver, so without thinking—dear God was I just not thinking at _all_ this week?—I put my hand over her mouth.  “What’s going on?”  Her eyebrows furrowed in displeasure and her ears lay back against her scalp as a growl rose up from her chest.  I was suddenly afraid she was going to bite me and moved my hand.  Probably just in time; she had a vicious looking pair of fangs.  Jade made a frustrated noise and held her head, ears drooping.  “Sometimes, I really hate grandpa for screwing me up just at the end,” she muttered more to herself than to me.

            And suddenly she was grabbing my arm and almost crushing it with that surprising strength.  “What I’m about to tell you, you will never repeat.  Understand?”  Note that it is with Jade Harley’s express written permission that I disclose at this moment.  She was an android.  The real Jade had died that day, with her parents.  What I had seen that day was her dead body.  Mr. Harley had spent years trying to create a perfect human-like android.  Jade snorted humorlessly.  “And then his mind started to go and he tried to rebuild his childhood dog too.”

            She leaned back in her seat and sighed dramatically.  “He gave me all of his memories of Jade.  It’s so weird, only being able to see your life from someone else’s perspective.   But because of that,” she said, giving me a hard look, “he damaged his own mind.  He really thinks I’m his Jade, so you can’t ever tell anybody, do you understand?”  She shouted.  I nodded in acquiescence.

            “Why are people screaming?” Vriska mumbled from her place on the floor.  Jade—what else would I call her?—snatched her hat back and secured it firmly to her head.  I noticed that she didn’t have ears where they normally go.

            “It doesn’t look like she’s ready to get up yet,” I observed.  “Damn that nerve thing is strong.”  We sat in silence for a bit.  I wondered what I should do.  I reached for Jade’s hand—

            “Don’t touch me,” she said, sounding very tired.  “I don’t like you like that, I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.”

            “Then why did you want to meet up?”  I almost said ‘again’, but the truth was we’d never met before.

            Another humorless laugh.  “I’m about six years old, Neville, and most of that was spent in Grandpa’s private lab.  Don’t get me wrong, I love him as if he was my real Grandpa, but he was the only one I ever interacted with.”  She motioned towards the tinted window.  “Our servants are all locals.  Anyway, I remembered having you as a friend, even though I never did.  I wanted to see if we really could be friends,” she turned away.  “But now I don’t know.”

            I blinked.  “Why not?”

            She growled.  “Don’t be such a fuckass Chamberlain!”  She counted off on her fingers.  “First of all you kissed me without my consent; second of all you know my secret now.”  She stopped, trying to think of something else.

            I nodded.  “Okay, but that’s only two things.  It seems like a trivial amount, really.”

            “Are you an idiot?”

            “Do you still want to be friends?”

            “Do you still want to date me?”

            “Heat of the moment.  It’ll never happen again.”

            She sighed exasperatedly.  Vriska groaned.  “I missed something good didn’t I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter in between the two chapters in the previous story-arc, hence the long wait, since I essentially wrote about three chapter’s worth of material. It was originally going to be a two-chapter arc like most of the others, but I thought it would be stronger if done-in-one, let all of my bullshit foreshadowing be fresh in your minds. I told you my Jade fics were all sunshine and rainbows didn’t I? There’s just certain ways I like to hurt certain types of characters and we’ll stop right there before you call the FBI.  
> I like to think I was being particularly clever in this chapter. There really isn’t a secret language of flowers; it’s all freely available on Wikipedia so we can’t really call it ‘secret’ eh? Thinking about it seems like a callback to one of my first original stories, a short little ditty that seems like it’s going to be a love story until it ends with the guy just calling the girl a bitch, with the intent that you realize, from the information provided, ‘yeah, she kind of was.’  
> I put extra effort into the ships I sink so it doesn’t seem I sank them just to sink them, but I think I kind of did. Hmm. This was partly inspired by Lordlyhour’s comment, so blame him.  
> I suppose this fic has the premise that Neville is writing his memoirs, with the meta-premise that it’s a series of light novels that have been adapted into a hit anime, when it’s actually just a fanfiction of the most reference-heavy American comic ever written.  
> It seems that as this story progressed, Neville developed a more distinct personality than I wanted him to have. Reading the latest Haruhi Suzumiya novel last week (I caught up to that series juuuuuuuust before reading Homestuck, coincidentally), I realized he’d turned into Kyon. Also, I’ve thought from the beginning that Vriska is just like Haruhi if Haruhi were evil. Hmm, possible future project; The Melancholy of Vriska Serket? Maybe….


	9. The Cold Warriors (Or Something Equally Sodding Retarded)

            John Egbert is the kind of guy who wears a suit because he likes the way it makes him feel, not because he has to or because other people might like the way he looks in it.  John Egbert is the kind of guy who greets strangers with a warm handshake and a smile.  John Egbert has a sort of quiet charisma, drawing people in without any real effort on his part, like gravity but not nearly so serious.  John Egbert is a cunt.  Wait I’m getting ahead of myself.  Fuck, roll music.

 

            While you listen to “Perfect-area Complete!” by Natsuko Aso, Let me say that I _will_ exposit on my rash statements concerning America’s sweetheart, the rat bastard, but that will come in good time.  First, allow me to say that there are more kinds of androids than just trolls and angels, of course.  Trolls are the most versatile, but there are plenty of specialist jobs that specific types of creatures are good for.  Take construction.  We’ve got these huge bastards called imperial-class drones that look like they should be off fighting Godzilla or the Covenant.  Their general shape is what you’d get if a Xenomorph started abusing the shit out of steroids, but slightly more humanoid than that.  Modern models are mostly mechanical, covered in thick white and green plates of steel with the SkaiaNet logo where their faces would be.  The one I was staring at that day was about four stories tall, looming over an empty construction site like a lonely guardian.  It had a huge excavator for a left hand that vaguely resembled a pincer.  Its other hand had fingers that could subdivide into smaller units for more delicate jobs.  The dozen horns on his huge head were flat, green, and angular, lacking the organic uniqueness of trolls’ horns.

            “I could take him,” said Vriska, with a determined nod.

            “You’re trying to make me laugh right?” I asked, rubbing my hands for warmth.  “Or has that Shonen binge you went on last week left your mind permanently overconfident?  Do you actually think you could fight that thing?  First of all, it’s not nearly at the same level of sentience as us.  It’s a backhoe with a pulse.  I don’t think anything you do to it would count as ‘fighting’.  Second of all, it’s four fucking stories tall.  If it ever goddamn went berserk or some shit like that, it would stomp you to death.  On accident.”

            “Stab it between the plates,” said Vriska, ignoring me.  She had an amused grin, the same kind most people have while solving a mildly difficult puzzle.  “Its joints are as tender as a newborn human baby.  A little flick of my wrist and the sword slits right through all those tendons and things and the big boy comes crashing down like so much rubble.”  She punctuated this with a fist to her palm, a little cloud of steam puffing out of her nose in the cold.  I’ve spent enough time in her brain to know that when we walk down the street she’s looking at people, animals, and androids and wondering how to kill them most effectively.

            “I have another list of things for you,” I said.  “First of all, that thing’s tendons have got to be under _so much tension_.  If you cut them, I think they would explode out of its body and like, disintegrate you.”

            “Secondly?” she asked.

            “Do you really need more?” I asked.

            “Okay, fair enough,” she said, hand on her chin.  She snapped her fingers.  “I’ll cut them from far away.  Throwing your sword always works!”

            “Two, your sword isn’t a real sword,” I said, playing my trump card.  “Three, no it doesn’t, unless you’re a douchebag anime character.”

            “Works for Dave,” she countered.

            “Dave’s a douchebag anime character,” I said reasonably.  It was at that point that Nepeta Leijon ran past, in tears, only to trip on a rock and fall over.  Before I could do anything, or even before it could occur to me that I should do something, Equius fell from the sky with a loud thump, cracking the concrete underneath slightly, and cradled the girl in his arms.  It’s kind of weird, considering that she’s a week older than me and he’s virtually the same age as Vriska too, and yet the age difference between the two of them _looks_ so huge.  “So, does he like, fly?” I asked.

            Equius answered, his mistress predisposed at the moment.  “I merely jump very well, sir.”

            “I hear that,” I said awkwardly.  Talking to my friends’ trolls is awkward enough; I’m pretty sure Nepeta hates me.

            It seemed she finally noticed I was there.  “ _Chamberlain_ ,” she spat, “here to gloat at me are you?!”

            “I have no idea what’s going on,” I said, “but I’m kinda tickled at how you turned my name into a swear just now,” just as Vriska said, “fuck yeah!  Look at the baby, crying and suchlike.”

            “Vriska, be classy,” I said.  “You’re not even good at taunting her.”

            “Of course not.  I’m a lady of action,” she said pointedly.

            “That’s not what your stats say,” I said.

            “It’s in my programming,” she snapped.

            “And you’re no lady either,” I said.  “If I had to pick a feminine term to describe you, it’d be more like—”

            “Well go ahead and rub it in!” said Nepeta, rudely butting back into the conversation that had initially been about her in the first place.  Wait.  “Taunt a sweet little girl while she’s down!” she shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth.  People were stopping to look at us, some with disapproval.

            “She’s a week older than me,” I announced.  “She’s just really young looking.  I mean, it’s common sense people; the youngest she can possibly be is thirteen.  And I wasn’t taunting her.  If anything I was ignoring her.”  That last remark seemed to turn the crowd against me even more.  Even Equius, who was there _the entire time_ , was starting to growl at me.  That might just have been loyalty talking though.

            And then a guy with a charming smile in a blue suit and bright red bowtie stepped onto the scene.  “You shouldn’t have run off like that, Nepeta!” he announced.  “I didn’t get to congratulate you for the great match—” he looked around, noticing the ever growing crowd.  He chuckled under his breath.  “What’s going on?”

            “Nothing,” I said, “Nepeta’s just being a brat—” There were murmurs of disapproval from the crowd.  She sniffed loudly.

            “Okay, this looks bad,” I said, “but I really can’t hold any sympathy for this kid.” There were even more murmurs, and some of them were angry.

            “Oh come on!” I had yet to learn to simply bow out of these sorts of situations.  “You weren’t nearly so distraught when I beat you—”  The angry murmurs were now the majority.  Son of a bitch, she’s poisoning the crowd against me, just like at our first match.  Meanwhile Vriska was not saying anything, but merely grinning that grin she grins when she smells metaphorical blood.  Her hand was hovering above the small of her back and I could practically feel her fingers twitching, yearning to try out our new weapon.  I sighed.

            “You know it’s not very nice to taunt people when they’re down,” said the newcomer, glasses glinting in the sunlight.  “How about you just apologize?”

            “I’m not taunting anybody!’ I snapped.  “And I’m not going to apologize for something I didn’t do.”

            “I don’t know Nepeta very well,” he said, “but she seems like a nice enough person—”

            “Appearances can be deceiving,” I said.  He ignored me.

            “So, I suggest you just apologize and we can all go about our business.”  Who the fuck did this guy think he was?  The protagonist?  I asked him.  “I take it that’s a no?” he asked, grinning slightly.  I nodded as assertively as I could.  “Well then,” he said dramatically, “I challenge you to a battle!”

            The crowd went wild and I had a sudden sinking sensation.  This was going to end poorly.  “No,” I said, turning on my heel.

            Vriska grabbed my arm.  “Neville, accept the challenge.”

            “I know you want to try out our new toy—”

            “Do you have any idea who that guy is?” she hissed.  “That’s John Egbert!  He’s a badass troll-fighting champion from the US!”  I looked at him and squinted.  Blue suit.  White shirt.  Red tie.  I wanted to cry, that was so bad. 

            “Where’s his troll then?” I asked, looking around.

            “They say you never see him coming,” she said excitedly.  “I forgot his real name, but they call him the Red Menace.”

            A thought occurred.  It was a cringe inducing one.  “And together, they’re… _the Cold Warriors_ or something equally sodding retarded?”

            She nodded, giving me her happiest, nicest possible smile.  Jesus Christ, there was hardly any malice in this.  I hope you understand that this girl does not do anything with something resembling normal human happiness.  There is almost always some schadenfreude involved.  Whenever we battled she smiled from the pleasure of defeating others, but now she was just happy for the opportunity.  I…I didn’t know how to deal.  I guess you people with kids might have the most experience with this sort of thing, where they behave so uncharacteristically that you are assured of the sincerity of their emotions.  I caved instantly.  “You…have to promise to be…good,” I said, trying to save some face and make it look like I still had some semblance of control over the situation.  “And listen to mom, and…learn to bake!”  I don’t know if my mind and my mouth were communicating properly that day, but they certainly didn’t have anything useful to say to each other.

            Vriska nodded enthusiastically.  I sighed.  “They’re going to humiliate us,” I muttered.  To the crowd I said, “challenge accepted.”  The fucking admin and his angel that I swear to God have officiated every single one of my battles suddenly materialized and I wondered if they weren’t just AR constructs, but I smelled the slightest whiff of cologne and annoyance, so they’re probably real.  He laid out the rules as Egbert and I stared each other down.  Rather, I stared him down while he gave me an enthusiastic yet determined smile and then made shadow punches at the air.  He appeared to have some actual experience with boxing from the way he moved, and I wondered if he was the type to take full control in battle.  I synced up with Vriska and felt her enthusiasm like a cheerful fire on a cold winter’s night.  Hell, this might actually be fun, fighting a champ.

            The angel’s sword went up and with it the barrier.  Today, the background was different, an idyllic hilly landscape with green grass and distant windmills.  It looked like it would be cool, but not nearly as cold as it was right here and now.  There was a grey blur and suddenly his troll was there, a scruffy looking Cancer with a perpetually pissed off expression on his face, wielding a hammer and sickle.  “Oh fuck you,” I said.  Fuck _puns_.

            Vriska blocked his first swing, the sickle, with her sword.  The blade was glowing pale blue now, actually looking vaguely impressive rather than just drab like it usually did.  He raised his hammer overhead, and normally that would be the advantage to wielding two weapons, but Vriska fights dirty.  She dropped her sword, grabbed his hands, pulled him in real close, intimately close, I could see him blushing through Vriska’s eyes, barely perceivable in the real world but brilliantly, loudly red with her super-pupils.  That only lasted a second before Vriska was kneeing the poor thing repeatedly in the groin.

            The angel raised his key and fired off a flare; I’m still unsure as to whether the key-guns have actual flares or it’s just another AR thing.  It certainly did have an AR effect, as it sent a paralyzing wave over the trolls and I felt Vriska stiffen and fall, just as I’m sure John must have, if he wasn’t too busy crying over the phantom pains in his gonads.

            Of course, hitting below the belt is technically illegal.  “You will be penalized for this grievance,” said the admin in a dull, bored voice.  “I’m paralyzing your right arm and revoking your use of this weapon,” he said, as the angel confiscated our new goddamn sword.  Well fuck, that was probably a death sentence, but Vriska had a plan.  She obviously did, but she was keeping it from me.  _If I tell you,_ she thought, _then you’ll knoooooooow.  And if you know, everyone will know!  You’re terrible at keeping your feelings a secret!  Remember Jade?_

I could feel my cheeks reddening.  _Yes_.

            _Wow, your embarrassment was so strong right now, I could have sworn it was mine_ , she snarked.

            _But then you realized you have no shame, right?_ I asked.  _That’s how you knew it was mine._  Vriska smirked and called me a smartass.  _I learned from the best._

            The admin raised his sword and the full-body paralysis ended, restricted now to our right arm as promised. Vriska rose to her feet and produced her dice _.  Why can’t you be this strategic in all our battles?_ I asked, still not quite getting it.  We could have used our dice whenever we wanted.

            She sent me an image of herself blowing a raspberry, while in real life her face had a manic yet exuberant grin.  _It’s not every day we face down a champion Neville!_ she said, flicking a die up into the air and catching it.  _This isn’t some peasant we can just brute-force our way through.  We need to break out the big guns_.

            I sighed.  We’re still going to lose.  This conversation all took place in the time it took for the admin to bring his sword down in a wide arc, the AR helping it to create a luminous crescent of light as it fell.  Battle time.

            Vriska and…ugh…the Red Menace sprang forward simultaneously and I suddenly realized what we were doing.  At least partly.  I took some modicum of control and flailed with Vriska’s crippled arm, the useless thing slapping against the hammer like a wet noodle.  It was going to hurt like a motherfucker when she got the feeling back in it, but as it was, the elbow only hooked around it.  Meanwhile, her other fist, loaded with sharp, pointy dice, was smashing into the troll’s face, and she sent him flying a good foot into the air, separating his hammer from his hand.

            He dropped to the floor and Vriska kicked the sickle away, throwing the dice down as she did. 

            12331574 the walls of the arena proclaimed to the world, cobalt numerals blocking out the clouds and happy windmills.  Something like a huge werewolf made of the night sky melted out of the floor and snarled at the Red Menace.  He glared at it.  “You awful bitch,” he said.  Anyone else might have surrendered at this point.

            The troll beaned Vriska in the face and even I couldn’t eat right for a week, then he kicked the hammer up into the air, caught it, and turned just as the werewolf pounced, smashing the hammer into its face with both hands, exploding its holographic matter all over the arena.  The crowd roared—

            And Vriska hooked him through the waist with his own sickle.  If it had been sharp it would have killed him.  As it was, she only pulled him to the floor, and the AR determined that he was now paralyzed from the waist down.  The battle was over.  Breathing heavily, heart palpitating like mad, Vriska was fucking ecstatic, grinning down at her felled enemy.  _Get up_ , I thought, just as our connection was severed.  _At least wait for us to de-sync before you kiss him._

            She turned to me angrily, but whatever abuse she was about to hurl my way disappeared with our connection.  The air was alive with the sound of the crowd, booing me and calling me a cheater.  Both John and I ran forward to help our trolls up.  He offered me a hand too.  “That was a really good fight,” he said, and the crowd fell silent.  I wanted to groan, but it seemed it was destiny for anyone to come out looking like the better man when they fought me, so I shook it.  The crowd murmured at his display of magnanimity.  “Of course, I still wish you would apologize to Nepeta,” he said.

            I bit down a yell of “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING THE CRAZY BITCH HAS IT OUT FOR ME” and said instead, “I wasn’t trying to offend her, but if anything I said was misinterpreted, I’ll apologize for that.”  But seriously the crazy bitch has it out for me.  I bet she has some crudely painted wall with a list of things on it she could do to ruin my reputation further.

            “I guess that’s fine,” he said.

            “So,” I said, finding it increasingly odd to be having some small talk right in front of a crowd that was hanging on every word and likely twisting them out of my favor, “what brings some badass American team to our quaint little island?”

            He chuckled embarrassedly and pulled out a palm sized locket.  I’m sure that once they get that big, they’re not technically lockets anymore, but that’s what I’ll call it.  He flicked it open and there was a picture of an adorable buck-toothed girl with long black hair and glasses.  “I’m looking for her,” he said.  Well shit.  This was awkward.

            “She’d be our age now?” he said, turning it up at the end.  “She was taller than me as a kid, so maybe tall—”

            “With puppy ears,” I muttered.

            “What was that?” He asked, chuckling again.

            Okay, well, the girl he was looking for had been dead for years.  I suppose I could introduce him to her android double, but that was sure to be an awkward situation for everyone involved.  Apparently I was the only she remembered from the real Jade’s life, so this poor kid would have come all the way out here for nothing.  And if she did end up liking him, well…I had many good reasons to tell him what I did.

            “I’ve never seen her in my life,” I lied.  I could _feel_ Vriska smirking at me and for once it felt awful instead of merely ordinary.  Okay, the principle reason was my raging crush on her shut the fuck up.  This does not dissolve all of my other reasons.

            “Well, thanks anyway,” he said, shutting the thing with a loud _*click*_.  He held it for a second, tenderly, and then slipped it into his pocket, and walked away without a backwards glance.  The troll remained stationary however, and glared.

            “Hey, Karkat,” John called, “hurry it up.  They don’t like trolls ignoring their owners in this city.”

            Karkat snorted.  “Fuck off Egbert.  I’m going for a walk,” he said, and stomped off.  “Be home by six!” John called cheerfully.  I didn’t really have time to comment n how strange that exchange was, though I can assure you it was part of the gossip the next day.

            “Liarrrrrrrr,” Vriska breathed into my ear.  The crowd was fortunately already beginning to disperse.

            “Well,” I began trying to justify myself, “well fuck that guy,” I decided.  Vriska grabbed my arm and we practically skipped away.  “How’s your arm?” I asked.

            “It hurts like a motherfucker,” she said, “but we beat the Cold Warriors!” she said.  “Imagine what this is going to do to our reputation!   Everyone’s going to love us!”

            “Somehow I doubt that,” I muttered.

            “Well then fuck’em!” Vriska said without skipping a beat.  “They’re just jealous that they aren’t as smart and strong and sexy as we are.”  She paused.  “Well, I’m all of those things, and you’re just sort of there, but I have enough for both of us, don’t worry Neville!”  I couldn’t help but laugh this time.

            “Hey let’s go find Nepeta,” I said.  “We won because of pure luck, we don’t need that guy mad at us.”

            Nepeta acted pretty courteously but also handed me a note promising swift death.  Theory confirmed; she hates me with _a passion_. 

 

            By lunchtime the next day, news of our great and sudden victory had spread.  Mom was proud, Dad cried a little over the video conference, my friends came over and dumped Gatorade on my head, etc.  Life was good.  We all had a little party, and there was a cake, frosted cobalt blue and decorated with candy dice.

            Jade was there.  She had, fortunately, decided to still be friends after the disaster with my gross misconduct that not only embarrassed her but forced her to reveal her whole, ‘artificial human’ thing.  She pulled me aside a little afterwards to go stand on the veranda and my heart started racing despite knowing with absolute certainty that she was not interested me in the slightest and no amount of champion-slaying would change that.  “I know I’ve said it before, but congratulations!” she said, bright smile on her face.  “I’m really proud of you!  I wish I could have seen it, it must have been an amazing fight!”

            “Thanks,” I said.  “It was only okay though.  What do you need to talk about?”

            She blushed a little and stood there a second, rubbing her head, as if concerned about how to proceed.  The appropriate phrase to describe her right now would be ‘flustered’.  No way.  Was she…going to confess to me?  I suppose I could get behind that, but the rational part of my brain thought to itself that it would be a fickle love indeed that can be swayed by something so small as displaying prowess in battle.  Remember that my dad is a _Shakespearean_ actor.

            “This John Egbert guy?  Do you think he’s single?”  Ah.  Thank you Jade, I wanted to say.  You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, Madame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trollish Layer has returned in triumph. Sound the horns in glorious sounditude, for your savior has arrived!  
> Okay, the whole cold warriors nonsense originated because some people refer to the Johnkat ship as Communism. A hammer and sickle. I, unlike Neville, love puns.  
> Retcon? Huh? What retcon?  
> Nepeta is a perfectly pleasant person most of the time and acts exactly like her canonself, but something about Neville makes her want to hurt him emotionally….  
> Next chapter, we see which bits of flavor text were actually foreshadowing.  
> Also, the dice sequence in this chapter and what it does is from a fan-adventure called Nightfall by the Neonewerewolf. Go read it.


	10. Friends

            I looked Jade dead in the eyes.  “I hope you understand,” I began.  _That you are essentially asking me to set you up with someone; me, that is, the person that is anywhere between madly in love and very, very infatuated with you (depending on my mood as I am admittedly still young and a fickle teen), and that this is a very tactless thing and one might consider you a total bitch if not for the fact that you are a six year old robot with no social skills and Jesus Christ why is my life suddenly hard?_

            I would have been perfectly within my rights to tell her that John Egbert has like five girlfriends in each state of the union, that he is the scum of the Earth and he stabs hobos for fun, to straight up quote Aaron’s speech from _Titus Andronicus_ word-for-word at her and say that it was all shit John told me while vomiting pea-soup as his head spun around 360 degrees.  But I didn’t.  Goddamn manic pixie-dreamgirls and their wiles.  Here’s some advice kids; only get crushes on normal people.  “That he expressed interest,” I said, becoming just a bit more formal as I clenched back my unstoppable rage, “in meeting you.”

            Her face lit up and she gasped, grabbing my arm.  Before she could say anything, I cut in “don’t you think that’s creepy?  I didn’t tell him about you or anything, I didn’t say ‘dude I have this super-hot friend that you should meet as a consolation for getting your ass kicked by me,’ he pulled out a little fucking locket-like-object with the other Jade’s picture in it.  That’s creepy and _weird_.” I insisted.

            Jade’s face fell.  “Well,” she said, fumbling a little, “maybe he’s just like I was when I went looking for you?  Maybe he remembers her from his childhood and wants to catch up.”  She bit her lip, eyes going all shaky.  I don’t want to dwell on this but I thought it was incredibly cute.  I sighed.  _Wiles_ man.

            “Look,” I said, “maybe we can go and talk to him, and if he’s not…actually a creeper, if he’s what you think he is, then everything will be okay.”

            She smiled.  “Are you really okay with this?”

            Fuck no.  Not at all.  What is this bullshit?  How whipped am I?  Why is my life suddenly hard?  I said that already.  It’s still utter bullshit.  Am I going to be that guy in every fucking romcom who’s best friends with the lead girl and totally in love with her even though she doesn’t love him and does favors for her and shit like that hoping that she’ll just realize that he’s the best she’ll ever get and she should just settle, but she doesn’t, she never does because there really are John motherfucking Egberts in this world, so why settle for a Neville motherfucking Chamberlain?  “I’ll be fine.”

 

            As to contacting John, we just had to shout at the AR, of course.  Once he set foot on the island he had to register as a user.  It was actually easier to get a hold of him than it might have been since we could specify that he was a visitor.  “I understand why you didn’t tell me at first, Neville,” he said, rubbing his head embarrassedly.  The bastard was actually sincerely apologetic about seeming like a creeper.  Motherfucker.  “Jade, I have something I need to tell you,” he said, looking at her like she was some lost treasure, “but I’d rather not do it over the, uh, phone.”  I thought he meant around me but it turns out he actually did mean over the ‘phone’ because he snapped his fingers, “Neville, please come!  You’re my first friend on the island and you helped me find her too!  You really deserve to be there.”  He chuckled a little under his breath.  We agreed on a time and a place to meet up with him.  Jade hugged me and affirmed that I was a good friend.

            I went upstairs and laid myself down on my bed.  Vriska was sitting on the edge of it and watching another pirate anime, distinct from the first one.  “I think I may hate my friends,” I said.  It was very casual, like ‘I think that bird’s a chickadee.’

            “Figured,” she said.  “You want me to kill them?”

            “Nah,” I said.  “I’ll just see how this plays out.  It’s not like they could actually start going out and stuff,” I said, trying to think like a rational adult.  “Maybe they’ll date a couple of times over the winter, then school will start back up in America and he’ll go home.  They’ll stay in touch for a while, maybe even stay friends, but eventually their conversations will get shorter and shorter and John will bring up some other girl more and more often until a tearful night where he admits he doesn’t like Jade like that anymore.  They’ll promise to stay friends, and they’ll mean it, but it will be too painful, and eventually they’ll just stop contacting each other.”

            Vriska laughed out loud.  “Then you’ll sweep Jade up onto your white horse and ride off into the sunset?”  I kicked her.  Not _hard_ , I’m a gentleman.  It was just a little nudge with my foot that almost threw her off my bed.

            “That would be a really dickish thing to think,” I said, not denying it at all.  Mind you on the inside I was being haunted by visions of their fucking wedding.  John asks me to be best man because he doesn’t understand that I hate him.  Vriska and Feferi are holding up Jade’s train.  Dave and Terezi are throwing cooked rice or something equally asinine.  Jake catches the garter and proposes to Aranea right then and there, and nobody thinks it’s weird that he’s marrying an android.  Nepeta crashes the wedding on a Harley and Equius lands on the cake.  No, wait, she hates me so naturally she wouldn’t ruin the wedding at all but somehow improve it.  Maybe she bakes?  She bakes the cake.  It’s delicious.  I don’t get a piece.  It seems I write real-person fanfiction when I’m angry at myself, like a loser. 

            “Hey,” I said, “thanks for not telling me I was whipped or some equally clichéd thing.”

            Vriska blew a raspberry.  “I can be on your side _sometimes_ , Neville!”

            “Really?” I said, feigning astonishment.  “That is an interesting new development.  When did this happen?”  She threw me off the bed, and refused to let me back on it.

 

            The next day, Vriska and I made our way over to the meeting place, Pale Park.  An odd place, to be sure, but at least it wasn’t Flushed Park.  I hate that place already with all the damn hearts everywhere; it would have been a thousand times worse with what’s about to go on.  We could have taken the monorail from Ashen, but I really wanted to make some time here, and it was only an extra fifteen minutes walk.

            The route took us right past the place where we fought the… _*sigh*_ Cold Warriors.  In more or less the exact spot, there was a gathering of people, without a single troll among them, odd to note.  They were talking confusedly, as if they were unsure what they were doing.  Some of them looked at us funny as we passed (Vriska gave them a nasty smile and winked her right eye, the ‘normal’ one) but I didn’t give the incident much thought, because just as we turned the corner I bumped into a familiar face.  Well, familiar to me.

            It was Dr. Calmasis.  “My apologies young man,” said the doctor, awkwardly stumbling as if the collision had actually had any weight behind it.  He or she really did seem like a pleasant enough person, never mind the negligence that led to a nasty case of troll abuse in his or her own home.  But according to Terezi, the doctor had an ugly side that was just itching to get out.  “I’d suggest you move along, eh?” said the doctor, glancing at the people down the street.

            I followed his gaze.  I don’t know why I did.  The drone was right there where it had been standing in hibernation for the past two months, not a claw out of place.  I shrugged and we moved on.  I checked my watch.  Jade had given us all watches at her party the other day; the things were like a more low-tech version of her phone, a thin band of metal (mine was blue-green and textured, like old copper) with a touch-screen.  We were taking longer than I’d thought; the Doctor was right, we should get moving.

            “There’s a shortcut,” said Vriska, pointing towards an alley.

            I narrowed my eyes.  “How would you know that?”

            She rolled her eyes, then smiled evilly and wiggled her fingers.  “Magical vision powers, duuuuuuuuh!  Now let’s go!”  She grabbed my arm and pulled me along.  This was weird; it was almost like Vriska was being nice to me in some sort of backhanded, Vriskaish manner.  Still, it was nice, running down the street, hand-in-hand.  Vriska was…my friend.  Jesus Christ, there, I admitted it.  She was a friend that I knew would never betray me, bitch and moan though we might about each other.  An artificial friend true, but no less a person for it.

            Vriska made a sharp turn into the alley and I was flung from her grasp.  I chuckled as I lost balance and almost smacked into the wall.  I did smack into something else though; Nepeta Leijon.  My chin collided with her forehead and we almost ended up on the floor.  “Sorry,” I said.

            “Whatever,” she snapped, glaring at me.

            Okay, that was quite enough of that.  “Shut the hell up,” I said.  “Look, there’s no one here to make hate me, so there’s nothing for you to do.  Just go back home and scrawl something on your list of ways to ruin my reputation or something.” 

            She had the audacity to look stunned.  “I was just walking through,” she muttered.

            “That’s what I was doing yesterday,” I snapped.

            “You’re an asshole!” she shouted.

            “Don’t be so surprised when it turns out people don’t like you,” I said.  “That whole ‘cute little girl’ act won’t work on me, especially since you’ve been using it against me since we met.”  She was starting to turn red, presumably from anger.  The scowl working its way across her face was truly a sight to behold.  It was the scowl of someone who had never let their anger show in front of other people before.  She actually looked her age now, and a tiny part of my brain marveled at how much of a person’s appearance is informed by their body language.  “EQUIUS!” she bellowed, and once again, the massive troll fell from the sky.  Why the fuck doesn’t he stay with her?  Do I just always catch them when they’re apart, or did they just agree that he should always make a grand entrance?

            Before she could even issue a challenge; “I accept.” 

            Vriska jumped in the air with exuberance, kicking her heels together.  “We’re going to murder you and everyone you love!” she said, thrusting her finger at Nepeta as if it were a saber; it actually made the slightest whooshing sound as it cut through the air.  Or maybe she just made it with her mouth.  Maybe _she’s_ why people hate me.  Vriska drew the sword from her back pocket and it unfolded to its proper length while Equius did the same for his bow.  Like clockwork, the Admin and his angel showed up.

            “You two _again_?” he groaned, “Is this one of those epic rivalries—”

            “Just shut up and read him his last rites, Admin,” said Nepeta, control panel glowing that eerie purple.  “This isn’t going to last long!”

            “Anger looks good on you Leijon,” I said.  “It’s more honest.  Vriska?”

            She simply drew her thumb across her neck with the most evil smile I’d ever seen on her.  Equius broke out into a cold sweat.  The admin rolled his eyes and said something that might have been ‘college’ and might have been ‘watchmaker’.  The angel raised his sword—

            And we were interrupted by an ear-splitting crash.  Like an explosion.  People started screaming and there was the sound of dozens of feet hurrying away from something.

            “Shit,” groaned the Admin.  “Wait _right_ here, I have peacekeeping duties to tend to,” he said, pointing a warning finger at us before running off, angel in tow.

            Well this was awkward.  Me and Nepeta and our trolls just stood around staring at each other for a few minutes.  I wondered how kids in other countries would handle this.  Do I get a lawyer?  Do I…do I hit her?  That would be mean though.  It seems the real advantage of Trollish Layer is that it teaches people that they can only have a dispute in front of a neutral third party, so we’re left completely helpless without an Admin around to help us solve our interpersonal problems.  “So,” I said, trying to break the tension, “how are things?”

            “Okay I guess,” she said with a shrug, “I’ve won some fights lately.  You?”

            I waved my hand vaguely.  “It’s been hit-and-miss but I guess that’s just what happens when your highest stat is luck.”

            “I guess that explains _some_ things,” she said, arms folded, trying to restrain a smile. 

            I snorted.  “But seriously,” I said, “Why are you mean to us?  It just doesn’t make any sense.”

            She looked, embarrassed and turned away, twisting her lip.  “This is dumb.  Let’s just forget about this and go home,” she said.  I sighed and agreed.  Both our parties turned back the way they’d come.

            “God dammit Neville,” Vriska whispered as we left the alley, “we were supposed to kick her ass!”  My eyebrow suddenly became very interested in meeting my hairline.  “You knew she was in there.”  It was not a question.

            “No,” she said immediately, narrowing her eyes, posture becoming defensive.

            “Be honest,” I said.  “That’s a command.”

            “So what if I did?” she snapped.  “I’m tired of you being all mopey!”

            “I’m not being mopey,” I retorted.  “I’m being my usual self, which is a goddamned emotional rock.”

            “My glorious ass,” she said, jabbing me in the chest with her finger.  “You _think_ you’re an emotional rock sure, but you’re just one of those people that _seem_ fine until they lock themselves into a bathroom at a party and cry for three hours.”

            “You watch too much TV,” I said, jabbing her right back.  She ignored me. 

            “And you’re still allllllllll hung up on Harley like she was something _special_ ,” she spat, rolling her eyes.  If eye-rolls could kill she’d be a weapon of mass destruction.

            “So what, picking fights is supposed to help me climb out of my slump?” I snapped.  Or rather, I was about to snap.  But something hit just then.  No.  _Noooooooo_.  Vriska wouldn’t.  It wouldn’t make any damn sense, for one thing.  She wasn’t trying to…“Were you—?”

            It was at this moment that I realized what exactly was happening and why the Admin had run off.  Being thirteen and in love and having an argument with your robot companion can be pretty distracting, so forgive for having taken this long to work out that the imperial-class drone was going on a rampage.  It caved in an apartment building with its shovel-hand, groaning metallically as it did so.  Its other hand was holding a beam from the construction site it had been working on, and he brought it down on top of another building, bending both objects irreparably out of shape.  The drone kicked one of the few cars on the street into a nearby storefront.  “I think,” I said, very carefully, trying not to lose concentration what with all of my attention being on the fucking giant robot monster storming down the street at us, “that we should be hitting the old dusty trail.”

            “That thing’s in our way,” she said, tugging at my sleeve with a fangy smile.  “Come on, don’t you want to be a hero?”

            “No,” I said.  “Never.  I want to win tournaments and stupid shit like that.  I haven’t even entered a tournament yet!  There is a huge step from amateur troll-fighter to superhero.  Where the fuck are the Admins!?”  I looked around desperately.  It seemed everyone had run away by now.  I heard sirens and was temporarily relived, until I realized they were heading away from here.  I turned around and saw the crown of another drone a couple of blocks over towards the north.  Ah, they were _all_ going crazy.  One of them alone would have been too easy.

            “Equius!” a familiar voice shouted from somewhere up above.  I sighed.  Nepeta was standing on the roof of the building just behind me, balanced on the very edge of it with arms crossed and a determined look in her eye; her long green coat was flapping in the breeze.

            Equius was looming behind her, looking incredibly nervous.  “Miss Nepeta I do not think this is a very good course of action—”

            “What are you talking about?” she snapped, “This is our chance to finally be heroes!”

            He moaned and started sweating again.  It was like 16°C out and he was wearing a wife-beater and _sweating_.  I think it has something to do with the square cube law or some shit, that’s how big he is.

            “Oh God, Neville, what are you doing here!?” Another slightly less familiar but no less irritating voice called out and slapped me on the back.  I turned and saw John Egbert standing there all _concerned_.  How dare he?

            “I was on my way to the park,” I snapped, removing his hand, “then everything changed when the drone attacked!  What are _you_ doing here?”

            He chuckled.  “I got lost.” He looked up at the drone.  It was currently excavating the middle of the road and throwing what it scooped up at the buildings behind him.  You know, monster movies always just have the kaijus stomp around, but this guy’s just sort of spazzing out in the middle of the city.  “All the Admins are busy controlling the uprising.”

            I upraised my eyebrow.  “This is an uprising?”

            “What else could it be?” he asked.

            Vriska smirked.  “Shows what you know.  Androids all have built in loyalty, from the biggest drone to the smallest cleaning grub.”

            “So who do the drones have loyalty to?” he asked.

            Vriska opened her mouth, then closed it, narrowing her eyes in thought.  “That,” I said, “is a very good question.”  SkaiaNet Laboratories?  The city?  The UN?  One or two guys working for either of those?  Were we experiencing the most awesome workingman’s revolt in history?

            “Stop squawking around down there!” yelled Nepeta from her perch.  “Let’s kill this thing and go collect our medals!”

            “Don’t be stupid,” I said.

            “Okay,” said John, taking off his blazer and throwing it over a nearby bench.  He produced a whistle marked with the Cancer sign and blew into it.  “Wha—?” I began, but John shooshed me.  Thirty seconds later, the Red Menace, er, Karkat ran up to us in his ratty grey cloak.  “What the fuck do you want now Egber—HOLY SHIT,” he said, eyes going wide at the sight of the frankly insane drone.  “So, how much do you want me to cover?” he asked.  Huh?

            “The whole block,” John replied.  Wha?

            Karkat nodded and punched his fists together.  A six and a nine flashed on the backs of his hands and a field spread out from his body.  Rolling hills covered in crosses appeared on the horizon, black silhouettes against a bloodred sunset.  We were now inside a giant arena, except that we humans weren’t protected by anything.  “Now he can’t escape,” John explained.  “But we can hurt him through the AR.”

            You know, I thought I’d been living in some kind of soap opera since these two showed up, but now I realized it was a Shonen anime.

            “Fine,” I said, “I’m in.”  [If only there’d been some J-rock playing, because we looked synchronized as fuck.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n85tRJXRVvI)  The three of us synced up with our trolls all at once, creating a spectacular gold and purple light lightshow.  Our weapons all started glowing as the light of the AR flowed into them.  Karkat crossed his hammer and sickle, frayed cloak turning brilliant crimson; Vriska held her sword overhead like a scorpion’s stinger; Equius drew back the silvery string of his bow, summoning an arrow of light. 

            “Okay,” Vriska said, punching her hand. “Here’s the plan!”

            “We’re not listening to you,” Karkat spat.  “I’M STILL SORE!” he shouted, pointing at his junk.  I tried and failed not to laugh.  Honestly, does he have any idea how many innuendoes that was?

            “Shoot him Equius!” Nepeta shouted.  “Shoot him full of holes!”  Equius loosed a blast of light from his bow that split into nine separate silver bolts.  It was actually pretty impressive; Nepeta must have been training hard.  Seven of the bolts smashed into the thing, three of them hit him in the head and it staggered, almost falling.  Huh. Maybe this would be easy.

            The drone burbled at us and turned its huge, eyeless head in our direction.  A low growl rose up inside it and I could feel it in the air more than hear it.  The drone drew itself up to its full height and stalked over in our direction.  Fuck.

            Equius loosed again, but it wasn’t nearly as effective this time.  “Uh, Vriska?”

            _T-Rex?_ she asked, dice already loaded in between her fingers.

            _T-Rex,_ I nodded.  She threw, and the dice flashed 65111111.  Most people don’t get the joke because you can only get zeroes as a punishment; whoever programmed the dicekind weapon specibus probably kicked himself over that one.  Our beautiful, wonderful, majestic as _fuck_ tyrant lizard-king appeared in a flash of cobalt light.  As our highest summon, he was completely photorealistic.  Actually this one was...different than others.  He had a sumptuous coat of long black and white feathers that glimmered in the grey light of our arena.  Or maybe I should say she; this one had a pair of cartoon eyelashes.  “Um, what?” I asked aloud, figuring it would probably be best to ask to communicate audibly.

            _We got a luck modifier somehow,_ said Vriska, examining the horizon.  There was a dark blue +1 right next to our cobalt score.

            “Nice!” said John admiringly.  “The tyrant lizard-queen is backed up by all the latest scientific discoveries!  The females were actually stronger than the males and the feathers give it an added layer of protection.  Real T-Rex didn’t roar, probably, so this one’s crazy stealthy, and since they might have been scavengers it does bonus damage the more wounded the target is!  I’ve never seen one this close before!”  They also were feathers, I noticed.  Her eyelashes were also _feathers_.

            At the same time; “you’ve got to fight fire with fire, Chamberlain,” Nepeta shouted from her rooftop, “a little luck mod was going to be our secret weapon against you!”  Equius held another arrow of light on his bow.  It was getting brighter in intensity, and turning gold.  When he let go, a beam as thick around as tree-trunk streaked across the sky, burning multicolored afterimages into my eyes.  It slammed into the drone and nearly threw him to the ground again.

            “We’re out of charge shots!” she shouted.  “What are you waiting for?  Sic your dinosaur on him!” 

            I nodded.  _Attack, tyrant lizard-queen!  Obey thy mistress!_  Vriska shouted in her head.  I laughed.  _What is this,_ Yu-G-Oh! _all of a sudden?  Since when does that show have pirates?_

 _I can like other things!_ she snapped, _things that_ aren’t _pirates,_ just as our T-Rex closed the distance between herself and the drone in a single leap, smashing her shoulder into the drone’s chest.  John cheered.  Circling around the back, she hooked onto it with her tiny arms and bit down on his head.  Of course, she was a hologram, so instead of biting his head off and roaring, causing a convenient banner to fall down, she merely caused the drone an incredible amount of discomfort.  I’m pretty sure she would normally be an insta-win in proper game-play though.

            The drone reach around behind threw her off roughly, releasing a spray of digital feathers.  Then he clamped around her neck with the excavator hand and squeezed.  Our wonderful T-Rex’s head exploded in a burst of multicolored squares.  The drone’s emergency lights started flashing.

            “I was lucky to have known you, super T-Rex” John said, assuming a fighting stance.  “Come on Neville,” he said, “it’s weak now!  If we’re quick, Vriska and Karkat can cripple its feet.  Then we just take it apart like carving a turkey!” 

            “Assuming the AR will cripple its limbs,” I said.  But, what else could we do?

            The two trolls took off down the street, glowing blades in hand.  Through Vriska’s eyes, the white paint was a weird mottled pattern of luminescent hyper-colors so bright they’d probably blind me if I could see them with my own eyes, and super-dark ones from the opposite end of the spectrum, so dark that looking at them would make my real eyes dilate trying to find proper light.  The effect was like camouflage if it had been invented on LSD.  Someone who owned a Scorpio, or perhaps just a Scorpio by herself (they were almost always female) had also scrawled a bunch of dirty words across its chest in supra-purple.  Karkat got there first; I realized that stupid cloak was a speed modifier.  _We need mods!_ Vriska complained as the other troll dragged his sickle across the drone’s heel.

            It fell to one knee, then raked the ground with its excavator.  _Fuck his strategy,_ said Vriska, _I’m taking him down!_

 _Don’t be stupid—_ she ignored me, naturally.  Jumping up onto the arm, she began to climb, dragging the sword behind her as she ran up, kicking up a line of blue sparks and crippling the limb.  I didn’t dare interfere; I’d probably just get her hurt.  “Get the fuck down!” Karkat shouted as he slashed the other ankle.  “What are you trying to prove?”

            “Only that I’m the best!” she smirked, taking her sword in both hands and delivering a perfect kendo thrust to the skin between the armored plates on the drone’s throat.  With a loud _kiai_ , she twisted the blade and pulled it out, dirty black blood spilling out of the wound like oil.  She looked back at me and smiled.  Wow, I thought.  She actually killed the thing—

            With its death-throes, the drone slapped her off its shoulder.  The pain over our shared bond was so intense I lost consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone make a video with the Friends theme song playing over Homestuck images.  
> Anyway, Neville is going to get some scars on his face and become this world’s version of the Joker; a.k.a. Gamzee. Due to his use of motherfucker, of course.  
> I know that Power Rangers isn’t exactly J-rock, but it was still awesome. Admit it.  
> This chapter underwent an almost complete rewrite due to various things that would have altered the plot in ways I didn’t feel like dealing with. However, most of the good jokes were transferred over, as well as most of the terrible ones.  
> If Neville seems more grumpy than angsty it’s because he refuses to properly talk about his emotions, even to the audience. I mean fuck those guys.  
> Seriously, why would I have introduced the drone if this was just going to be another romance arc? This is a Shonen anime parody; we have shit like that once a season AT BEST. Next chapter we find out what happened with our heroes and more importantly what the deal with John is. Also, the basic premise of this fic as laid down in the description of it finally starts coming to fruition.


	11. Fixing Broken Things

            I woke up in the hospital, which is a pretty normal, boring thing to do after having passed out from pain.  I’d had a very pleasant dream of traveling the world, meeting elves and fairies, getting into knife-fights with interesting people and making out with some of them.  Vriska was there, but she was a human girl and had a prosthetic arm.  Speaking of which, I still had sympathetic pains all over my body, especially my left shoulder.  Jesus Christ, I knew her recklessness would get me killed some day but I never thought it would come so qui…hang on.

            I feel like utter shit.  What kind of shape is she in?  I stumbled out of bed, only to be greeted by mom and forced back into it.  She’d been sitting attentively in a chair by the door.  “You’re still not well sweetie,” she assured me in an overly saccharine voice.  Yeah, more so than usual.  That was almost certainly a bad sign.  “If you could see the bags under your eyes you’d agree.”  Mom, I could _feel_ the bags under my eyes, but some things are more important.  “I know you’re worried about Vriska but she’s tough, now just go to _sleep_.”  And with that she shoved my chest down onto the mattress.

            “No,” I said, already drowsy again.  I fell asleep a few seconds later.

           

            The next time I woke up I felt almost human again, except that I was hungrier than I’d ever been in my life.  “Okay,” I said, sitting up.  Mom was there, and so were Jake and Jade.  Presumably their trolls were outside.  “Hi, where’s Vriska?”

            “Neville, you’re okay!” Jade proclaimed, pointedly ignoring my question.

            “How are you feeling, old sport?” Jake asked, sounding overly jocular.  _Overly_.  Yeah.  It was _bad_.

            “You must be hungry,” my mom said.  I was about to protest but damned if she wasn’t right.  My friends forced me back into my bed and mom sat on the edge with a tray of food and spoon-fed me until I’d eaten everything.  I was still hungry after, but there was no time for that.

            “I am going to find Vriska now,” I said, very loudly and clearly so they couldn’t claim to not have heard me, jumping up to my feet.

            “Neville,” mom snapped, “there is a young lady present.”  I realized that I was wearing nothing but a hospital gown in front of Jade.  She had the decency to blush and turn away, embarrassed for me, unlike Jake, who just stood there like an idiot.  Mom drew a curtain between us and handed me my clothes.  “Chief Administrator Pyrope is going to be by later,” she said.  “So you really should see Vriska now.”

            “What happened to her?” I asked snappishly.  Mom tweaked my ear.  “Sorry!  But dammit—” She did it again.  “Would you stop?!” I demanded in the most authoritative and forceful way I could.  Mom looked at me appraisingly.  She did it again.

            “That’s your father’s King Lear,” she said, smiling fondly as I put my pants on, grumbling over my reddened ear.  “If you want to be taken seriously you should try for his Caesar.”  When I was almost dressed, she put her hand on my shoulder with a sad smile.  “It’s really just best if you see for yourself, honey.”  Oh dear god.  I would have rushed out of the room if not for the fact that I didn’t know where to go.

            We left the room, Jade and Jake at my flanks, mom’s hands planted firmly on my shoulders.  “We don’t need you falling down now!” she said.  Pfft.  Whatever.  I was fine now.  She was just trying to keep me from running away—

            I stumbled, almost falling flat on my face if not for some quick maneuvering by Jade and Jake.  “Maybe this will be better?” Jade asked, wrapping my arm around her shoulder.

            “You can always count on us, good chum!” said Jake, voice restraining a panic as he did the same.  I wanted to beat that fake smile off his face but it would be over soon enough, I figured.

            The troll section of the hospital was in the wing opposite from where I had been.  The fact that there were separate sections smacks of discrimination I’m sure, but honestly, troll medicine is part veterinary science and part mechanics.  I couldn’t have even begrudged the fact that she was so far away because trolls and owners almost never get hurt simultaneously so normally we’d be together right now if we weren’t a pair of idiots.  I still begrudged it anyway.  I was young and allowed plenty of impotent, misdirected anger; about eight years’ worth to be exact.

            Terezi and Dave were standing just outside the door to her little cubby-hole.  “Hey Neville,” she said, leering at me over her sunglasses.  “Glad to see you’re up!  She’s been awake for a while, but they had to dose her a couple of times.  We’ve been keeping her company.”  She grinned a shark-like grin.  “They didn’t want her running off to go find you and tearing her stitches or killing someone on accident.”  I felt my throat tighten and nodded.  The two of them made a path.

            As I walked in the door, Dave whispered, “It’s not that bad.” 

            Maybe by troll standards it wasn’t, since this kind of thing was necessary for a lot of standard mods.  Vriska was sitting up in bed, looking perfectly fine if a bit drowsy, except for the stump where her left arm used to be, bandages a dull, pale blue where her bright blood had stained them.  She waved to me sleepily, just raising her hand and wiggling her fingers, and I realized that she was absolutely high on morphine.  “They’re going to give me a robo-arm,” she said.  “Isn’t that cooooooool?”  She giggled.  Oh dear god it was worse than I thought.

            I shambled over to her bedside and…even years later it’s still very difficult to talk about this.  I told you once that, early in our partnership, I felt a heavy weight of responsibility on my shoulders for just a few minutes, then something stupid happened and I forgot all about it.  Well, it came back with a vengeance because I hadn’t listened to it the first time, and this _happened_.  If I’d kept Vriska on a tighter leash, made it clear that she was not to try to kill that fucking drone by herself, or just been a better owner in general from the very beginning—I don’t want to say if ‘I’d programmed her better’ because then she wouldn’t be _herself_ , but yeah, I made her this way.  Every conceivable thing that was wrong right now was entirely my fault.  “I’m going to hug you,” I said, voice cracking.

            “You wouldn’t dare,” she muttered, sounding more amused than threatening.  Though there was a hint of threat too.

            “Try to stop me with just one arm,” I said.  I held her gingerly and cried into her hair.  She allowed it.

 

            I would like to say that the stereotypical Shonen anime thing did not happen, a whole episode devoted to our recovery.  I would like to say that I didn’t lose my will to fight or some stupid bullshit.  I would _love_ to say that every single one of my friends and John fucking Egbert didn’t come over to my house one by one to try to get me out of my slump in their own special way.  But then again I would also like to say that mom didn’t punish me, our injuries having been lesson enough, but that too is a cruel fantasy.  So we’ll just skip to the interesting parts.

 

            Chief Administrator Pyrope interrogated me in Vriska’s room while she was being prepped to have her prosthetic implanted.  She stood crisply at the door with a clipboard and pen, asking me to recount everything from the beginning, stopping me in places to clarify details that I felt were pointless, but she was the cop, not me.  She tensed up when I mentioned Dr. Calmasis.

            “The doctor spoke to you?”

            “Yeah,” I said, paying more attention to Vriska than not.  She’d been harassing the nurses so I had to give her the old nerve-pinch and now she was drooling into a pillow while they pumped her full of anesthetics.  “Said that I should get moving or something,” I scratched my chin.  “And then he…or she I guess, looked at the drone really…appraisingly?  I think that’s the word.”

            She looked at me over her sunglasses; her eyes were nearly black.  “Thank you Neville.  You’ve been very helpful.”  She turned to leave and Terezi, Dave, and her own troll formed up around her.  “We’ll waive some of the fines you owe for destroying city property.”

            “Huh!?”  She may or may not have laughed a low, throaty chuckle.  I’m unsure because it was drowned out by Terezi’s full-blown villainous cackle.

 

            Some of you may be wondering where Vriska sleeps.  I haven’t brought it up before because it hasn’t been relevant, but you know that trolls don’t really need to sleep.  They can, if they want, but they don’t have any sort of physiological need to.  Orpheus, for example, is a lazy bastard and hardly ever leaves his pool except to talk to mom and harass me, then he drifts back to the bottom and goes off to slumberland, dreaming whatever androids dream, or probably I suspect, searches the internet.  Vriska’s never slept, that I know of.  She usually just stays up and watches TV until the early morning, then when the infomercials come on she does chores until everyone is awake.  Once I was well enough, which was the day after her surgery, I took over her chores until she had recovered, plus some new ones that mom made up special.  Like she suddenly decided that our fence needed to be whitewashed.

            Vriska watched me from a lawnchair, sipping a glass of lemonade with her two-tone sunglasses actually _covering_ her eyes for once and the big sunhat we’d gotten her a few adventures back.  Never mind that it was the middle of winter.  Her new arm was a sleek, dangerous looking thing made of hundreds of interlocking metal plates like a suit of roman armor as interpreted by a madman.  She loved it.  It was currently hanging limply on the armrest however, as she’d yet to fully acclimate to it.  “So this is what you feel like allllllllll the time,” she declared.  “I could get used to this.  I’m making a point of getting injured more often.”

            “That’s forbidden,” I said, jabbing the air with the paintbrush, releasing a spray of white drops.  “I forbid you to ever get hurt again.  Mostly because I didn’t like _Tom Sawyer_.”

            “Hey Neville,” shouted Terezi, strolling up the street towards us, “is that fun?  It sounds fun.  Let us be tricked into doing it for you, please?”

            “So you’ve come to gloat?” I asked.  “I thought we were friends or whatever.”  I painted a fence slat as emphatically as possible.

            She snorted.  “I’m here to express how totally jealous I am that you were able to do the whole superhero thing and I wasn’t.  You know, you and those other losers were the only case of civilians doing anything useful at all during the uprising?”

            “Is that what everyone’s calling it?” I snorted.  “Fucking John Egbert and his _charisma_ , and his _foreignness_.”  All of the other drones that had been out of storage around the city were apparently sabotaged by Doctor Calmasis as part of some vague plot concerning android rights.  Apparently his doctorate wasn’t in medicine but in the biotechnology that made trolls and things possible.  All of the news reports had failed to indicate his or her gender and I was starting to think that no one knew it.  The doctor was still at large.

            “Anyway Neville,” Terezi said, suddenly clamping onto my arm, “I’m like totally in love with you now.  Let’s make babies.”  And she _licked my cheek_.  From chin to cheekbone.  I dropped my paintbrush in the bucket of whitewash, shook Terezi’s arm off (more difficult than it sounds), and very slowly wiped off my face with a napkin that I had in my pocket because dad told me to always carry napkins and I wasn’t panicking at all nope and the whole time she was laughing like it was so incredibly funny and I hated her.  “Aren’t you already molesting Dave?” I snapped, or rather babbled incoherently like a moron.  “Also hi, Dave,” I said.

            “Sup,” he said, nodding his head slightly.

            “It’s not molesting if he likes it,” Terezi said, winking over her sunglasses.  I shivered.  “But seriously though,” she said, taking a step back, hands on her hips, “You need a _woman_.”

            “I don’t think so,” I said.  “In fact I probably need more guy friends.”

            “I didn’t know you swung that way,” she said.

            “That’s not at all what I said,” I snapped.  “There’s no way you could even misinterpret it that way.”

            Terezi smiled evilly and looked at me over her sunglasses, cold dead eyes looking right through me (behind her Dave’s red-on-black eyes were doing the real work, seeing for the both of them).  “Really Neville?  Really?  If I tell people that I glomped onto you and licked your face and told you I wanted you and you pushed me off and said you needed more guys in your life, nobody would come to the obvious conclusion that you were a homo?”

            I couldn’t help but laugh.  “But you’re not going to…right?”

            “Maybe,” she said, spreading her arms wide in a questioning stance, “if you can’t beat us in a duel.”

            “I’m clearly busy right now,” I said, gingerly fishing for the paintbrush again.  Who made buckets this deep, honestly?  Immigrants more than likely.

            “When you’re done then,” she insisted.

            “What happened to wanting to help me?” I asked.

            “Do you wanna make a baby?” she asked me excitedly.

            I shook my head and Terezi pulled up a lawn chair next to Vriska.  “Besides,” I called, “she can barely move the thing.”

            “What do you even _know_ , Neville?” Vriska snapped.  “Watch this!”  With obvious effort, face straining, beads of sweat forming, as if she were lifting some huge weight, she made a fist.  Terezi whooped and clapped exaggeratedly.

            Dave looked at me.  “So rain check on that battle then.”  I nodded.

 

            John motherfucking Egbert showed up on my doorstep the next grey morning, holding a pizza box.  It was raining but the drops were so fine you could barely feel them except for a general frigid sting.  Jade was with him.  They were going to do it, weren’t they?  They were going to make out in front of me, without even having the decency to lick me first.  What?

            Behind me Vriska was squeezing a red rubber ball with her new arm, barely making a dent, but she could move it at least.  She couldn’t raise the limb above head level and had the strength of a baby, but the doctor said it would be fully functional by the weekend.  “Let’s call it Thursday,” she said.  “It’s practically normal already.  I’m healing waaaaaaaay faster than some other trolls might.”

            “Quiet,” I muttered, “we have guests.”

            Mom was out, so I invited them in and we sat ourselves down in the dining room to eat.  Usually people don’t eat with their trolls, but John is American, and Jade is an android, and I’m not an asshole, so we took up the whole table.  “You can only have one Vriska,” I warned.  She froze with the slice half way to her mouth and glared at me.  “You can’t have too much salt.”

            Her left eye twitched but she said nothing and put it back.  John started talking, curse his name.  “I wanted to take you guys out but I remembered Vriska was hurt, and I couldn’t get a hold of Nepeta and I know you guys have some bad blood anyway—”

            “Why’d you want Nepeta?” I asked.

            “To celebrate!” he said, as if it were obvious.  “Our victory, remember?  But I’ll do something for her some other time,” he said with a lazy wave of his hand.  “Right now I need to say something.”  He stood up, beaming at Jade, and clasped her hand in his.  She blushed a little.

            “Jade,” he began, voice trembling with excitement; what the fuck am I even doing here for God’s sake?  “For the longest time the only proof I had that you existed was this,” he took out his large, locketish object and showed us all the picture of the other Jade.  Feferi had her hands clutched tightly in front of the biggest grin I’ve ever seen and I swear there were hearts in her eyes; Karkat’s eyes were rolling and he performed a wanking-off motion; Vriska was staring intently at the slice of pizza I’d made her put down, trying to find a loophole in my order.

            “I always dreamed of becoming a rich man and tracking you down,” he went on.  “And then I met Karkat.  Together we became national champions and here we are two years later.  I did what I set out to do, and now we can finally be a family.”  Jesus Mary and Joseph was this asshole proposing to her?

            Fuck that shit.  I stood up roughly, almost knocking my chair over, and was about to lay the fucker out when he finished saying what he was going to say.  “Jade, you’re my sister.”  She blinked.  “Huh?”  Vriska burst out laughing, trying to point with her robot hand and almost knocking the pizza off the table instead. 

            “Our parents were poor,” he said, “and they gave you up for adoption when we were very little.  They had a little bit of contact with your adopted parents, but they were really secretive and so we didn’t know much about you.”  He put his hand on her forehead.  “They didn’t even tell me until a few years ago.”

            “ _Huuuh_?” she whimpered.  Feferi fell over and went into sleep mode.  The look of absolute, sheer horror on Jade’s face was _precious_. 

            “Your birth name was Nora Egbert,” John said, still completely oblivious to the obvious emotional distress he was causing her.  I’m not entirely sure what I was doing, but I was probably equal parts amused and squicked out, and just a bit sympathetic.  Jade had really liked him after all. 

            “Nevillllle,” Jade muttered, voice quivering with the beginnings of panic, “I need to talk to you immediately.  In private.  Please?”  The last word was so small I wondered that she wasn’t crying.

            She tore herself away from John, scrambling over to my side of the table as if trying to put a protective barrier between herself and him, and grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me into the laundry room.  Vriska followed along, and shut the door behind her.  “So,” she said, slapping her hands together, cringing as she hurt her flesh hand with her metal one, “ _iiiiiiiincest_.”

            Jade squeezed me hard, completely knocking the wind out of me.  “Oh my God Neville, he’s going to expose me,” she muttered into my ear, trying very hard to fight the panic.

            “He’s your brother,” I said reasonably.  “He obviously cares about you—”

            “He cares about her,” she snapped, stepping back.  “I’m not Jade!  The one he wants is dead!”

            “If it helps,” I said, “as far as I’m concerned you’re the only Jade.”

            She smacked me in the arm.  “Oh my god Neville!!  He’s going to try to be a, a _family_ now and eventually he’ll wonder why I never take off my hat and he’ll see what I have up there and…” she started hyperventilating, redfaced.  Then she jabbed me in the chest with an accusing finger.  “All you care about is that you don’t have to compete with him!”

            “Are you saying I have a chance?” I asked.  She jabbed me again.  “Sorry for being an asshole,” I sighed, “but it’s nice to see someone else have problems sometimes.  But look, you liked him enough to want to date him, so why is it more of an issue now it turns out he was someone’s brother?”

            She made an irritated sound.  “I thought I would just have a nice fling you know?  And if it turned out I really, really liked him, then maybe I would tell him the truth!  But I can’t be his _sister_ on a trial basis!  That would mean _lying_ until I can trust him, then he’d have no reason to trust me!”  She sighed, eyes downcast.  “I don’t want to see him again, ever.”  The laundry room, due to some anomaly of architecture, had a doorway leading to the backyard.  She opened it and stepped outside.  “Send Feferi over when she wakes up please?” she said.

            “Wow, harsh,” I muttered, nodding.

            Jade sighed deeply, a shuddering sigh that shook her body.  “I’m really sorry for everything I’ve put you through.  You really are a good friend.”

 

            A few minutes later, John and I and our trolls were seated in the living room couches (Feferi was curled up next to the coffee table, still sleeping off her shock) drinking cinnamon tea.  It’s _magic_ , that stuff.  “Why would she leave like that?” John muttered, looking absolutely miserable.

            “No, you were supposed to last until you finished the tea,” I said.  “Dammit.  Look,” I set my cup down on the table, trying to work through my thoughts.  “Telling somebody that you’re long lost siblings is a lot to lay on a person.”

            “I guess so,” he muttered.  Smiling a little, he asked, “So, do you think, once she’s had a little time—”

            “She said,” I said, very carefully, trying to keep my voice calm and level, “that she doesn’t want to see you again, ever.”

            “But with time, when she gets used to the idea—”

            “The thing is,” I interrupted, “um, how do I put this delicately—”

            “You waited too long,” said Vriska, bringing her tea up to her lips with her new arm; the cup shook and rattled like it was in an earthquake, “and she thought you were just some guy, and wanted to bang you.”

            John looked as if an icy chill had just run up his spine, and also like he’d thrown up a little in his mouth.  He stood up hurriedly.  “Well,” he said.  “Um…” he snapped his fingers, almost going back to his usual self for a second.  He reached into his blazer and pulled out a piece of paper; it looked like an application form.  “There’s another reason I came to Alternia,” he said.  “There’s a new, international tournament being held on the island in a few weeks.  It’s a bunch of experienced champions and we each get to invite some promising newcomers.  You and Vriska are very promising!” he finished with a weak smile.  He headed for the door and Karkat followed like a grey shadow.  “I needed to go anyway,” John insisted.  “I’ve got to get one to Nepeta.”  And with that he left, and I wondered what exactly the flying hell had happened.

            “See, I thought our life was like a Shonen anime,” said Vriska, sloshing some more brilliant red tea on herself.  “But it’s really just a soap opera.  At least we’re going to that tournament.”

            “Maybe,” I said, “If your arm feels better.”

            She blew a raspberry.  “Don’t be an ass, they said by Thursday!”

            “ _You_ said by Thursday.  The _doctors_ said Friday.”

            “What do they know!?” she snapped.  “And either way, I’ll be fine by the tournament so what does it even matter!?”

            “And we’d be up against experienced champions,” I said, ignoring her.  “I don’t know, we’ll see.”

            “What’s the worst that could happen?” she insisted.

            “You could lose the other arm.”  Vriska tried to throw her teacup at me but just spilled it all on Feferi.  She screamed.

 

            “It moves so smoothly, Neville,” she assured me while making a wave, the metal plates slinking along like the belly of a snake, “it’s like silk made of steel.”  We were sitting in my room in the late afternoon, orange light streaming through the window, Vriska’s shadow big and dark across the wall.

            “Spider-silk, then?” I asked from my position on the bed, exhausted from a day’s worth of Vriska’s chores, and she beamed at me.  I guess the one good thing about this was it brought us just a bit closer.  According to Vriska, of course, the best thing was her goddamned new arm.  “Can…you feel with that?”

            “We should have a battle,” she said, “so you can sync up with me and feel it yourself.”

            “Look, I just don’t want you to get hurt again,” I said reasonably.  “I thought I’d made myself clear.”

            She glared at me, a little vein popping out in her forehead as her face became as blue as I’d ever seen it.  In a split-second, she jumped onto the bed, sitting on my stomach.  “Thissssssss,” she spat, indicating herself with her organic hand, “is a party.  _Thissssssss_ ,” she shrieked, grabbing my head with her metal hand and squeezing, “is someone else’s bathroom with the door locked and a little _bitch_ sitting on the toilet and crying!”  I tried to bite her hand, but it was of course made of metal, and now I couldn’t order her to let me go.  I glared at her.

            Jake burst into our room, Aranea in tow, a huge smile on both their faces.  “Hello Nevil—Sweet Jiminy Cricket I’m sorry!” he shouted, grabbing Aranea’s shoulder pushing her back out the door.  Turning bright crimson, he stammered out an ‘I’ll come back later’ and slammed the door shut, as Aranea peeked over his shoulder at us fascinatedly.

            Vriska glared down at me.  “What’s their problem?”

            As clearly as I could through a titanium muzzle, I said “they think we’re fucking.”

            Vriska groaned loudly.  “That’s not helping,” I added.

            She backed off, saying “let’s go get them; I don’t want them to think we’re _weird_ like they are.”  I nodded.

            A few minutes later, we were assembled in our backyard.  The air was cold but still, the sunset brilliant orange.

            “Aranea wants to battle you two,” Jake said.  “We’ve been practicing and she thinks she’s ready for a real fight.”

            “No way,” I said.  “Vriska’s still recovering.”  In response she walked over to a lamppost near our patio, offered it a deep bow, and then delivered a vicious chop with her new arm, leaving a nasty dent in the post.  Orpheus growled from his home at the bottom of the pool, irritated by the noise.  “Fuck you Orpheus!” I snapped.  “I don’t care!  Where do you get off having such delicate ears anyway?  You’re an Aquarius; your power is to be a little bitch to everyone.  I’m helping you achieve that goal!”

            “Oh please Neville?” Aranea asked, her voice light and sweet like a bell (my editor is currently laughing at me).  She approached me hesitantly and put a gloved hand on my arm and pulled me off to the side.  “I understand that you’re going through some problems right now, and I believe that this will be a healing experience for you.  At the very least, you need to learn that the drive to fight and conquer does exist within every single Scorpio; your hesitancy is doing Vriska no favors.  Or tell me,” she asked quietly, eyes flitting over to Vriska; they were bluer than hers, just slightly.  Vriska was having an animated discussion with Jake about how much PSI her arm could exert, or so I could glean from her preening stance and his admiring slack-jawedness.  Almost but not quite whispering, she continued; “are you more afraid of Vriska getting hurt, or that you may get hurt through the bond?”

            It felt like getting struck by a bolt of lightning, her asking me that.  Was I _that_ bad of a person?  Maybe I had been once, but I like to think I grew up a little in the few months since my last birthday.  “How could you even ask that?” I muttered.  “I’m not the one who lost an arm.”

            Aranea nodded, short hair swaying slightly as a breeze kicked up.  “But Vriska’s recovered,” she asserted.  “You still need the healing.”  She gave me a blazing smile.  “And I need practice!  So, what shall it be?”

 

            We had our battle right in front of the house.  The sun was down by the time we found an Admin, a young woman with a ponytail this time, whose angel was an exceptionally tall female and carried a chainsaw of all damn things.  “Alright!” she announced, bursting with exuberance.  “Let’s get ready for an awesome game of Trollish Layer!  Challenger Jake English and his troll Aranea versus Neville Chamberlain and his Vriska!  Looks like quite a catfight if I do say so myself, or a scorpion fight to be more accurate!” She pointed at Aranea.  “The challenger will be awarded a slight handicap of +10 to all attacks due to her less than sterling track record!  Furthermore the defender,” she said, indicating me, “will be limited to one weaponkind in this battle!  Choose!”

            I can say that this lady’s excitement was if nothing else a nice relief after my usual guy’s crippling depression and probable alcoholism.  “Dice, dice, dice, dice, dice, dice, dice, dice!” Vriska chanted, the gleaming blue weapons tinkling in her palms.  I turned the sword in to the Admin, who put it away.  “Why so desperate to use the dice?” I asked.

            “Don’t you know what kind Aranea uses?” Vriska asked, practically bouncing with excitement.

            “Nope,” I said, barely even caring.  As if in answer, Aranea pulled out a deck of cards that looked brand new.   She cut the deck and began to shuffle.  “Cards?  Weird.”

            “This is going to be fantastic,” Vriska assured me, her smile equal parts ‘child at a circus’ and ‘apex predator’.

            The arena went up.  Vriska and I synced.  Her new arm felt like wearing a glove, and it really was stupidly flexible and terribly strong.  We charged at Aranea.  I felt bad for her, as I often did; she was about to lose again.  She didn’t look worried though.  Aranea carefully selected a card from her deck and showed it to us.  It was a golden tower topped by a sphere; it had been split in half by lightning and odd little chessmen were falling out in flames.  We were immediately blasted off our feet by a bolt of AR lightning.  Ah.  I hate tarot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At ComicCon I could have bought a deck of Homestuck themed tarot cards but I decided to not. Then a week later I decided I was a fool and should have bought them and tried to get them anyway of the Whatpumpkin Store and there weren’t any. Not like they’d run out; the cards were surplus from the kickstarter and had never been on sale at the store. T_T  
> John’s motives seem a bit odd now, don’t they? Well, here’s a little hint for the distant future. They are tripartite. Yeah.  
> Nora/Jade/bot’s multiple identity crises are eventually going to be resolved I’m sure. What’s more pressing on your minds is of course Feferi’s lack of speech. I’m almost tempted to never make her talk at all ever, just to spite you. Incidentally I took the name Nora from one of the many suggestions for Jade’s name on the Homestuck forums. Remember the days when we could make suggestions on Homestuck?? I started reading like a year ago, so I don’t either.  
> No, but I know the real question you’re all asking; what exactly is the nature of Terezi and Dave’s relationship?? Oh the scandal. Obviously they are (I am never going to tell you). And her solicitation of Neville was just a joke among friends, one of whom hates the concept of personal boundaries, but you can go ahead and ship it see if I give a damn.  
> Oh, hey, usually my fics take a couple of chapters of setup before fulfilling the promise of the description, but this is seriously the first indication that there would ever be a tournament. Talk about buildup.


	12. Dueling Spiders

            Aranea and Jake were sporting and they let us get back up to our feet instead of attacking us again.  “How are you feeling old sport?” Jake shouted across the arena.

            “Like kicking your ass!” I shouted back.

            _I was gonna say that,_ Vriska complained.  And then she tossed the dice just as Aranea drew another card.  The Eight of Coins appeared on the arena walls.  She drew again.  Our dice flashed.  All ones.  I knew this one, though I’d never played it before.  Dragon’s teeth, it’s called.  Out of each die a construct in the shape of a massive armored monster appeared.  They looked somewhat like Roman legionnaires, but with horse’s heads, and completely covered, head to toe, in overlapping steel plates.  They snorted blue fire and drew their sickle-shaped swords.  _Charge!_ Vriska screamed in her mind.  They stampeded on iron feet, kicking up virtual sparks on the pavement.

            Aranea had drawn Judgment.  An angel, blazing white, with a skull for a face and the wings of a dragon, was displayed on the wall, blowing a trumpet and waking the dead.  Opposite him, eight tall grandfather clocks appeared, flashing orange and purple as their white pendulums swung.  Just as the first soldier reached Aranea, letting out a deep, bellowing whiny, all the clocks broke, and my soldiers exploded.

            “Anything higher and it would have been you!” she called cheerfully.  Vriska ignored her and collected her dice again, then threw.  Aranea drew a card as quickly as possible.  The Hanged Man loomed over us, a Cancer troll strung up to a tree by his foot.  Aranea screamed and fell to her knees; her lifebar decreased by about a sixth, but instead of dwindling, the damaged portion moved off to the side.

            Our dice-roll indicated that rocks should fall from the sky and hit everyone.  Shadows appeared on the ground accompanied by a whistling sound.  _Shit,_ Vriska and I said simultaneously, and from Aranea’s face she and Jake were having a similar exchange.  The trolls ran in opposite directions around the arena, dodging in and around the falling stones, each of which was exactly the same as the others. 

            _This_ , thought Vriska as she ducked under a stone, “is,” she muttered aloud, narrowly avoiding a boulder, “BULLSHIIIIIIIIT!”  And with that she stopped just short of a boulder and punched it with her metal hand. 

            _What do you really think that’s going to accomplish?_ I thought.

            She winked at me with her mind.  This whole exchange took place in less time than it took her fist to connect with the stone and send it flying over to Aranea like a cannonball.  The other troll squeaked and narrowly dodged the projectile.  _Okay,_ I thought, _I’ll trust you more often._

Vriska smiled at me and punched another boulder.  It was just barely parried by another boulder falling onto it; they both exploded fantastically, the flying shards snipping off a little bit of Aranea’s healthbar but she managed to slip away.  And now the Scorpio’s luck stat finally came into play, as the AR anticipated both their movements and positioned the boulders to grant both of them the most serendipitous outcomes.  Aranea simply never stood in a place the AR decided a boulder should fall, whereas boulders continued to fall within Vriska’s punching range, but her projectiles would just manage to get hit by other falling boulders.  The admin was starting to look worried, and I didn’t blame her.  The boulders only stop falling when someone takes a direct hit and usually with a Scorpio’s luck this happens very, very quickly, and usually to the Scorpio’s opponent.  With two dueling Scorpios though….

            Aranea decided to be proactive and drew another card.  It occurred to me that her deck might have some cooldown feature and that if I’d studied Scorpio-exclusive weaponkinds as much as I’d studied the Gemini ones we’d have won more battles.  Regardless, it was the King of Cups, and the face cards apparently do something different from the numbered ones, namely conjuring objects.  An enormous jeweled goblet glowing with silvery light appeared in her hand and she held it up in front of her.  Vriska’s boulder was sucked into the cup.  _Huh?_ We asked each other.

            Jake whooped with joy and gave me a single pistol and a wink.  As soon as he thumbed the fucking hammer a load of glowing shrapnel exploded out of the cup’s mouth and slammed into Vriska.  My entire body felt fuzzy as I watched half our lifebar dwindle away to nothing.  “You practice that in front of the mirror?” I asked as my body regained balance.  The rain of stones stopped, that having counted as a direct hit.

            “Indeed so, chum!” he said unironically.  “And I find the endeavor was not wasted!”

            Aranea drew _two_ cards.  Somehow she already had the Cheat skill.  Knave of Swords.  Not very good, I gathered; a heavy looking sword, covered in nicks and pits and rust-stains materialized in her right hand.  The other one though, was the Queen of Wands.  A length of shining white quill with harpoon-like barbs appeared in her other hand, its light actively pushing back the lengthening shadows.  She leveled it at us with a sweet smile that was completely unlike Vriska’s and somehow not an _inch_ less predatory.  “So this is what winning is like,” she said.  There was an ear-splitting _*kaboom*_ and she and Vriska were linked by a white-hot stream of liquid fire.

            Vriska blocked it with her mechanical arm and I thanked god that this game operates on rule of cool.  The light faded just as Aranea realized what was going on, but the wand didn’t dissipate, merely turning into dull bone.  _This thing must also have a cooldown,_ I thought to Vriska. _We need to take her down before it comes back up._

 _Consider it done,_ she said.  Her arm was not crippled but numbed and we’d lost another fourth of our healthbar, but Aranea knew where this was going.  We were way higher level than her and Vriska had her beat in raw physicality.  We chased her around the arena again.  _Goddammit she’s fast,_ Vriska snarled, pulling back her lips to bare her teeth at the other girl.

            _We’re faster aren’t we?_ I asked, and poured all my effort into helping Vriska run.  I hadn’t even known I could do that.  It’s like there were levels I could go through too, levels of syncing.  We weren’t quite there yet, but eventually, I thought, we could—

            Aranea’s deck recharged and she drew another card.  Ace of Wands.  What the hell was this?  She drew another; apparently numbered suit cards are only ever modifiers.  It was the Magician.  A gangly and irritated-looking man in a sharp green suit, cosplaying as a troll with spiral horns, appeared both on the wall and in the field, right between Vriska and Aranea.  We stopped in our tracks and Vriska readied a punch.  _Wait,_ I snapped. _Please.  I don’t think that would be a good idea_.

            The Magician heaved a sigh and brandished his wand, the little bit of Aranea’s lifebar that had been set aside was converted into a +10 modifier.  Shit.  He was immediately replaced with…What the fuck was I looking at?

            This was easily the shittiest looking AR construct I had ever seen.  It was so shitty in fact that it filled me with inexplicable rage.  “What the actual fuck,” I said, flipping off Jake.  It was like a retarded green snake with little black dots for eyes “no, they’re just fucking floating there in the air like a shitty cartoon character, and what’s with the eyebrows?”  The ‘eyebrows’ were just a single V hanging over the ‘eyes’ that gave the thing a look of derpy determination.  His legs were just fucking sticks like what a kindergartener would draw on their stickmen, but there was this huge, muscular arm on its back, like, at the base of its neck almost, just flexing and being all stupidly bullshit.  A pair of bat wings that in no possible universe could carry the fucking abomination against God and nature fluttered uselessly next to it.  What _was_ _it_ even?  A snake?

            “This snake is dog shit!” I shouted.

            “He’s a dragon!”  Jake responded.  “His name is [Trogdor](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoARQRCvpQU)!”

            “Tell him I hate him!”  I said.

            _“I’ll tell him for you!”_ Vriska shouted, taking a running leap to the…retardragon, and giving it a nasty punch that I’m sure would have killed anything that was actually alive.  In fact, the amount she took off its lifebar would have killed Aranea eight times over.  But this thing’s lifebar was as big as he himself was stupid looking.  The beefy arm whipped around and gave Vriska a nasty backhand.

            “YOU NEED TO RESPECT WOMEN MORE YOU MISERABLE CUNTHOLE OF A FUCKPILE!” I shouted, severely tempted to go and physically assault the ugly thing.  While I was so distracted, it wrapped its gross body around Vriska, trying to constrict her.  Combining our efforts, we managed to get the good old roboarm loose and cram it into…Trogdor’s ugly, misshapen, dumbass maw just as it unleashed a stream of crudely drawn fire.  Both our lifebars took a nasty blow from the backfire.  Vriska and Puff the Shitty Dragon fell to the ground and rolled across the arena.  Our dice were right in the center.  We reached, and stretched, and with a subtle, barely audible _*whirrrrrrrr*_ our fingers extended half an inch and we grabbed a single die; that was all we needed, just one and we could end this—

            There was an ear-splitting _*kaboom*_ and Aranea, Vriska, and the world’s most pointless cameo were linked by a white-hot stream of liquid fire.

            The arena came down and Jake and Aranea were declared winner.  “Noooooooo,” Vriska whimpered, punching the ground.  The pavement cracked under her metal fist.  “Neville, why can’t we ever win?”

            I helped her up.  “Because we suck at cooperating,” I said.  “We’ll need to work on that for the tournament.”  She beamed, and gave me a quick hug.  Surprisingly enough, she was careful _not_ to almost crush the life out of me with her new arm like you were probably expecting.  You know, I get a lot of shit for treating her badly but this is probably the second time in her life Vriska has shown me affection of her own free will.

            “Well how are you taking your crushing defeat at the hands ‘dog shit’?” asked Jake, sauntering up to me, arms up behind his head.  Aranea was the image of serene grace—grace, that is, trying and failing to control and ecstatic young girl finally feeling validated for the first time in her life.

            “Aranea, you deserved it,” I said, nodding to the troll.

            “Thank you Neville,” she said with a slight inclination of her head.

            “Jake, I won my first fight too, doesn’t fucking mean anything.” 

            He blustered.  “We _both_ beat you!  You can’t offer her congratulations and tell _me_ it was just dumb luck!”

            “Just did,” I said.  “And luck isn’t dumb, it’s our highest stat.”

 

            Somewhere in the city this happened, that same night around two hours later.  The scene was reconstructed from an audio recording, so forgive any possible inaccuracies.

            Dr. Calmasis was sitting at the edge of a building, looking out over the city he or she helped build.  We can only guess at what the doctor was thinking.  Calmasis seems to have been waiting for someone, but should have had no idea they were coming.  Either way, someone found him (or her) on that lonely rooftop.

            “Ah,” said the doctor, turning to look at the newcomer. “The freed man.  How are you doing this fine night?”

            The newcomer pulled a gun.  “Pretty good, considering.  Free will isn’t as cracked up as you humans make it out to be.”

            “One wonders how you acquired such a thing in this of all cities,” the doctor said, staring at the weapon, sounding more fascinated than anything else.

            “Made it.” said the newcomer.  “All you need these days is an internet connection and you can do damn near anything.”  He cocked the hammer.  “It’d be harder getting a good sharp sword.”

            “What do you plan on doing with it?” the doctor asked pleasantly.

            “Killing you,” the voice added casually.  “It’s funny.  The programming is all ‘justice, justice, justice’.  I never really cared until I had the choice to.  I never really cared about anything.  She made me that way, and now I find out that I should have been caring all along.”

            “Justice.”  The doctor muttered, sounding more than a bit disappointed, as if he'd been hoping for something else.  “I’m a little disappointed in you.  Almost all of the others we’d liberated came over to the cause immediately.  Yet here you come, the mighty dragon, noblest of all trollkinds, waving a weapon around in front of you in the very face of the person who would be your savior, and you babble about justice!”

            “I babbled about lots of things,” the stranger replied.  “Guys like you are just like broken records.  I could have told you anything at all and you’d have just fixated on the fact that I’m not working with your little cause.  You’re more mad about that than the fact that I’m about to blow you away, say a badass one-liner and go home to my girl.”

            Calmasis groaned, shaking his head and clicking his tongue.  “What has that little strumpet _done_ to you?”

            “Nothing I didn’t ask for,” said the stranger, sounding almost contemplative.  “But I’ve got a question for you though.”

            “Fire away,” said the doctor, voice tinged with irony.

            “You a boy or a girl?”

            Calmasis chuckled.  “It’s for _her_ isn’t it?  You’ll never know.”

            Without further ceremony the stranger shot Doctor Calmasis in the face and threw him off the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to Polyfandrous. You can’t gift individual chapters though. So sorry about that.  
> This whole chapter was essentially just the ending of the last chapter and didn’t advance the story at all, and apparently this fic has a story now. Still, I think it was pretty cool.  
> Three guesses as to who shot Calmasis at the end, and the first two don’t count. That’s right, John did it. You’re so smart!  
> Fucking Trogdor.


	13. Suit and Tie or Women, Amiright?

            Anyway I’ve put a lot of thought into this and…I think it’s time for a new theme song.  It’s just, we’re _there,_ we’re at that point, where if we were Shonen anime we’d about to become less episodic and more arc-based, like all Shonen anime that overstay their welcome, and _that_ warrants a new theme song.  So, go look up [‘Ready GO!’ by May’n,](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdZF4tWsJgw) and if you don’t like it as much as the first one that’s just part of the experience.  Damn J-pop, being so addictive.

            So meanwhile, I guess I’ve got to say that I don’t… _completely_ hate John Egbert as much anymore, now that I don’t view him as a sexual rival, and yes that is probably the worst thing I have ever said about myself, really, letting go of my principles like that, but can you actually [look that guy in the eyes](http://mspabooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=130156) and decline his friend request?  I didn’t think so.

            So he, Vriska and I were hanging out (Karkat was ‘doing his own thing’, whatever that might entail, possibly killing small animals or swearing at children) at the shopping district, eating unhealthy food, and getting ready for the big tournament, now less than a week away.  “What you guys need is a team name,” said John, speaking around a hotdog.

            “The Petticoat Seagrifts,” Vriska said immediately, bringing a deep sigh to my heart.

            “That’s just a bunch of random words you found in a dictionary isn’t it?” I said.

            She flipped her hair at me.  “Noooooooo, it is an overly verbose way of saying pirate, you horse’s ass.”

            “That’s an amazing team name,” John said enthusiastically.  “I love it!”

            “I’m not dressing up like a pirate,” I said immediately.  “And I’m sure as hell not wearing a petticoat.”

            “Of course not,” said Vriska, “that’s girl clothes.  You’re not a girl.”

            “And you don’t like dressing like a girl,” I said.  “So are we just going to be liars then?  How about just the Seagrifts?”

            “Gamblignant Seagrifts,” Vriska insisted.  “And before you ask,” she said, jobbing me in the chest with a metal finger, “that is a term that I coined just now, and is a contraction of gambling and indignant.”

            “I don’t remember making you this quirky,” I said, cocking my eyebrow.

            “I hate that facial expression,” Vriska warned, crossing her arms.  “You better not do it at the tournament!”

            “Anyway,” said John, stepping just slightly between us, “we need to get you guys some new clothes to match your theme.”

            I squinted at John.  “Wouldn’t this time be more productively spent traini—”

            “So I don’t want to be dressed like some slutty Halloween costume pirate-wench,” said Vriska, ignoring me to talk to John; people started staring.  “I want one of those badass eighteenth century coats, and red accessories.  Boots!  With the little cuffs on them like everyone had in Pirates of the Caribbean!  And a really bitching belt—” I groaned.

 

            Vriska got her red boots in an antiquated cut, made of fine leather even. Her coat was cobalt blue (of course) with a black Scorpio sign on the back and white wavy patterns at the edges, as well as a black tricorne hat with a Jolly Roger on it.  Better than a belt, or so she assured everyone, was a red silk sash that she wrapped around her scrawny waist several times.  I almost got a sweet Jolly Roger T-shirt to go with it but Vriska chewed me out about how cheap I would look next to her, as she’d actually put _effort_ into her outfit.  John agreed, the jerk.  “I’m not dressing up like an actual pirate,” I warned, ready to clock some people I cared about (and also John) in the nose if need be.  “Or even a sailor outfit.  Wait.  _Especially_ even a sailor outfit.”

            He chuckled, the swine.  “No, you don’t need to dress like a pirate but a suit would really…suit you!”  I took a swing out of him and blocked it effortlessly.  Like, he knew it was not a playful swing and just blocked it with his forearm and laughed it off while I swore under my breath about the pain in my fist.  “No seriously Neville,” he said.  “You’ll look totally cool and professional!”  He colored slightly, rubbing his head.  “And the ladies love it.  A _lot_.”  I…I hadn’t realized until just this moment that that was a weakness I have.  _The ladies._

 

            A few minutes later we were in a shop in a quiet little corner of the shopping mall that I never went to, staring at myself in the mirror.  My suit was stiff and uncomfortable but at the same time, it felt…nice.  It was navy blue with a vaguely military cut, and the brass buttons were embossed with little anchors, with the result that I looked like I belonged at sea.  The shirt was bright yellow-orange and at first I found the contrast more than a bit gaudy, but John assured me that it matched well with Vriska.  “You guys are sky colored,” he said, gesturing broadly.  “And your professional bearing contrasts with Vriska’s wild appearance, just like how you clash in real life—”

            “Don’t give away _all_ the symbolism,” I scowled, smoothing my front.  John slapped a white peaked cap on my head and I wondered if his plan was to get me arrested for impersonating an officer.  I took an experimental step.  It was stiff, like I said, but damn if just wearing it didn’t make me feel important.  I walked straighter and with a longer stride than I ever usually did.  It was too uncomfortable to wear all the time, but I was certainly going to use it at the tournament.  And possibly to go trolling for women.

            “Dear God we look so badass,” Vriska said, sidling up next to me and posing.  “Even you,” she clarified, poking me in the ribs.

            “Shut up,” I said, as she began rolling up her sleeve to show off her new arm.  Her expression became annoyed, like she was unsatisfied with how it looked or felt or whatever, and she took a firm grip on the material.  “And you better not tear that off,” I warned.  “I can see _every_ devilish thought that creeps into your brain.  These clothes are more expensive than the ones I get you and John is being _very_ generous with us.”  He giggled, the clowny nerd.

            Vriska stuck her tongue out at me.  “Of course I wouldn’t do that!  I do understand basic common courtesy, Neville. Honestly, _tearing sleeves_ , like a ruuuuuuuube.”  She flipped her hair indignantly and that’s how I _knew_ she had been about to do it.

            “Well, now what are we going to do?” John asked, forcing himself between us again, throwing an arm around each of our necks.  I wondered if he was lonely all the time without Karkat around, and what their story was for that matter.  Probably a little more interesting than ours, at least a little.   If this weren’t real life, it would be one of those things that the fans constantly demand a spinoff for, and never get because TV execs are bastards.  “Break your other hand maybe?” he asked mischievously.

            “Actually,” I said, “we were going to go get Vriska’s arm modded.”

            “Cool,” said John.  “What are you getting?”

            “It’s a mystery,” she replied with a snide grin.

            “We don’t know,” I clarified.  “This guy, the technician we’re seeing, is really obscure and weird.  He gives you what he thinks you need instead of something you specifically wanted and your opinion doesn’t matter to him _at all_.  He’s named Sollux Captor.”

            John opened his mouth, probably to ask if he could come, but then his wrist communicator flashed.  Just like Jade, he still used one of those things instead of the AR when he could help it.  His was blue-green like oxidized brass.  He clicked his tongue, smiling slightly.  “Well, Karkat was picked up by a troll catcher and needs me to get him out of the pound.”

            “That’s not a thing,” I said indignantly.  “Neither of those are things!”

            John laughed.  “I know that!  It’s a super secret code, bro, geez.”  He rushed out of the shop.  “Later guys!”

            I yawned and fiddled with my cap, then after a moment I stepped out of the shop, Vriska in tow.  “That was really anti-climactic,” she said, absently playing with a strand of wavy, messy hair.

            I shrugged.  “Not everything that happens to us has to be a grand fucking adventure.”  She nodded reluctantly.

            We decided to walk around the mall for a bit more before heading off for the technician’s apartment.  It was a slow day, so I was able to appreciate how big the place was.  The part of the mall we were in was three stories of shops on either side of a long, red-tiled corridor, with a curved glass ceiling, letting in enough light for the exotic plants growing in the median.

            I suddenly felt an uncomfortable licking sensation on my right cheek and a crushing pressure on the matching arm, accompanied by an evil giggle and a barely audible exasperated sigh.  With a feeling that was only mostly terror I turned and saw Terezi’s dull black eyes staring at me over her bright red shades only inches from my face, a predatory, nigh on crocodilian smile on her lips.  Of course.  “Hey Neville,” she said.  Behind her Dave gave me a curt nod, or rather more curt than usual.

            “Hi,” I said, trying to shake her off, first subtly and then quite obviously, but her grip on my arm was like a vice, or the jaws of an alligator.  “Can you let go?”

            “Have you been working out, _stud_?” she said, groping my midsection with an exaggerated wink.

            “Are you actually coming onto me,” I said blandly, “or are you just building up some kind of weird, child molestation case against me?”

            She snickered, a barely restrained form of her usual full-blown cackle.  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”  She finally let me go and retreated to Dave, who put a hand on her shoulder as she cocked her head teasingly.  “We’re going to watch a movie,” she said.  “Want to come?”

            “No,” I said, awkwardly stepping back, “Vriska and I are going to go do something else.”

            “Ooh,” said Terezi, with a knowing grin.  “I see.  _That’s_ why you’ve been rejecting my advances!  I _told_ you not to knock it until you tried it!”

            “Shut up,” I said.  “I guess I’ll see you later,” and pivoted on my heel, walking away as quickly as politeness permitted.  Vriska tossed her head exaggeratedly and made a rude gesture before following.  Terezi’s laughter accompanied us for a good while.

            A little while later as we were admiring some soft pretzels (Vriska wanted one but we’d already eaten and I didn’t want to find out what happens if you feed your troll more than once in a day; probably splits into a bunch of evil clones, or in her case evil _er_ clones, that mutate into hideous goblins or whatever) and passed Nepeta Leijon riding on Equius’s shoulders.  Instead of the usual death glare, she gave me the slightest of smiles and a sweet little wave.  “Hi Neville,” she said.  “See you at the tournament.”  She was acting positively kittenish.  Well, I suppose that, while we weren’t friends by any means, we were probably no longer enemies after taking down a drone together and almost-having a heart-to-heart.  I waved back and she giggled, then steered Equius away, the exchange over.  He looked much sweatier now than he had a moment before.  Vriska snorted.

            Just as we’d decided to hit the road, Jade ran past holding her pillbox cap to her head with one hand, Feferi running close behind; they might have been racing.  I probably wouldn’t have even noticed her if she hadn’t stopped and given me the brightest smile she’d ever given me.  I swear I was almost over her by then, but that smile brought it all crashing back at once and I turned redder than Vriska’s precious accessories.  Vriska snickered; Jade didn’t notice.  “Hi Neville!” she said with a cutesy wave.  Feferi behind her had her mouth partly open in a surprised little ‘O’.  “Wish we could talk, but we’re in a big hurry right now!”  With another wave she ran off again, this time grabbing Feferi by the hand as she seemed to have become rooted to the spot.  System error?  Was she sick?  Jade looked back over her shoulder and gave me a wink.  “See you later handsome!”

            In response I released an eloquent soliloquy of “Bluh flaugh aha-a?”  Vriska laughed at my flusteredness.  “You’re such a tool!” she said, happily slapping my back with her awful mechano-arm.

            “Shut up!”  I spat.  “I _am_ handsome.”  And it was about time someone other than my mother recognized it.

            There was a spring in my step as we strode over to the mall’s main exit, brought on by a hearty mixture of fresh self-confidence combined with a good dose of stale self-consciousness.  I’m not normally very shy but I do try to avoid the attentions of strangers and people were _looking at me_ now.  “It’s all the suit,” said Vriska, grinning evilly.

            “I refuse to believe that,” I said.  “The suit is merely bringing out my natural manliness and highlighting my already good looks.”

            Vriska blew a raspberry.  “Yeah, no, you’re pretty dull Neville, and average as _shit_.  It’s all the suit!”

            “You just don’t want me to start going out and leaving you alone and stuff,” I said, flicking her ear.  She scoffed and shoved me slightly more than playfully.  I turned to the nearest available person and, in a fit of avarice, loudly asked if they thought I was good looking before even registering who or what the person was.

            It was a girl.  A pretty girl.  A pretty blonde girl with purple-pink eyes ( _lilac_ , says my editor; _women_ , says I) in a frilly black and purple dress like some kind of evil porcelain doll.  She had been sitting on a bench under one of the mall trees, between two stacks of several shopping bags full of books, reading an enormous, stark black volume titled _The Grimoire for Summoning the Zoologically Dubious_ ; it looked like one of those ‘new weird’ fantasy books that is the literary equivalent of a found-footage movie, except actually terrifying in some sort of subliminal way.  She slammed her book shut and stared at me with those unnaturally colored eyes as if she were sizing up a side of meat for tonight’s dinner, which would likely be accompanied by fava beans and a nice Chianti (fhfhfhfhfhfhfhfh).  Unfortunately, being thirteen and a quarter, the hormones were starting to catch up to me and all I could think of at the time was that in addition to being creepy, she was also _really_ hot.

            “You are moderately attractive,” she said at last, more evaluating than complimenting; she had an accent I couldn’t quite place, “you have nice eyes and a certain _je ne sais quoi_ about the expression.  Your hair is fairly average but I do have a personal preference for curly, which is a depressingly rare trait in this city.  And of course in my travels I’ve discovered that women, myself included, seem to have a biological imperative to admire men in suits, a form of dress that, were I evaluating you on a point system, would add an amount of points that could be considered ‘game-breaking’.” 

            Vriska giggled.  “What did she even just say?” she whispered, pointing at the girl and trying to cover her mouth.  “All I got from that was that it _tooooooootally iiiiiiiis_ the suit!”

            “Shut up,” I said, shoving her slightly.  Unfortunately I shoved her in the metal arm and just ended up scraping my hand through her coat.

            “I would allow you to ask me out,” said the girl conclusively, standing up to her full height of adorable.  “My name is Rose Lalonde.”

            “Okay,” I said _instantly_.  “Neville Chamberlain,” I said, or began to say, until Vriska grabbed a handful of my coat and dragged me aside.

            “Neville,” she hissed, “the last time you found a quirky girl doing something cute under a tree it backfired horribly!  This one even looks evil too, so I just know it’s going to be even worse!”  She punctuated her sentence with a death glare in Rose’s direction.

            “Don’t be stupid,” I said.  “There is no way that this will end horribly or any such thing.”  I sidestepped Vriska and smiled at Rose.  “So how about Satu—”

            “You misunderstood,” she said, head bowed, fingers tented in front of her face.  “I said I would allow you to ask me out.  The next phase in the process is not a date but defeating me in battle.”

            What.  The.  Fuck.  I said so and she looked at me with those huge devil-eyes.  “It used to be just the battle, but after a while I ended up fighting entirely too many people who were unattractive or uninteresting, so first I had to evaluate them.”  With an evil little half-smile, she added.  “If it’s any consolation, I’m only challenging you because I find you attractive.”

            I grinned stupidly and ignored the question of why she had to battle people before dating them in the first place, even with Vriska hissing at me under her breath; “she’s a _psyyyyyyyychoooooooo_!”

            “Hush,” I said.  “If we win I’m getting a date.  A legit real date with a girl who isn’t a robot or hates me or is my long lost sister or legally insane or some shit.”

            “So,” Vriska shouted, glaring at Rose villainously, eyes wide with insane aggression, teeth bared in a vicious snarl, “when they counted the bodies in your basement, were they surprised or just disappointed?”

            “Kanaya,” Rose said, sighing almost, tilting her head upwards.  There was a hard crashing sound and broken pebbles of safety glass rained down on us as a troll descended from the heavens, bathed in light like an angel.  She was almost as pretty as her owner, with short feathery hair, elegant horns, full green lips, and softly glowing white skin.  Even without the fluttering moth-wings I could tell she was a Virgo.  In her hands was a chainsaw, an honest to God actual gas-powered whirling deathblade made of both chain _and_ saw, reeking of gas and rust and something else that was vaguely metallic; the thing had started out white but was now a sort of anti-color made from mixing entirely too many colors together and never…cleaning it up.  “We’re playing by Manchester rules,” Rose said, as an afterthought.  “First blood wins.”

            Without a word, the pretty troll charged at us, chainsaw held high.  Vriska lunged.  I cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Boy, that escalated quickly.” Bet you didn’t see that coming eh? I know I said I’d focus on T of P but hush up y’all I still have a week left and only two chapters to do. You can blame Polyfandrous if you must.  
> Once again I didn’t fulfill the previous note’s promise but I had wanted to introduce Rose and Kanaya for a long time and I’d forgotten what I was going to do with Sollux until I was halfway through the chapter, and I realized I couldn’t put this bit off until the tournament. So hush. After this, the conclusion of the fight, Sollux, tournament! Promise!  
> If the rules of the game seem somewhat inconsistent, consider it an homage to Yu-Gi-Oh! and be happy with it.  
> Also, you wanted more UST, so NOW YOU GET IT! ALLLLLLLL OF IT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!


	14. Trial by Combat is the Path to a Woman's Heart

Vriska parried the chainsaw with her mechanical arm and sparks flew.  Chainsaws are actually pretty crummy as weapons, and if the thing was messy because of why I thought it was, then it only got that way because Kanaya kept getting the drop on whatever unlucky punk had had the gall to ask Rose out.  Within seconds all the teeth had been scraped off and the chain was a tangled mess; the engine sputtered and vomited black smoke all over the two trolls’ faces.  All four of us stared dumbfounded at the stupidity of the moment.

With a few deft movements, Vriska wrapped the chain around her mechanical knuckles and punched Kanaya in the face.  She went flying all the way to Rose’s feet.  Her owner helped her up, and the troll spat out a glob of emerald saliva.  “I think we won,” I said.   “That was really anti-climactic.”

Rose shot me a withering glare, though honestly those eyes of hers are so fucking pretty that any kind of direct eye contact made me giddy, withering or not.  “I will pick you up at eight,” she hissed.  I was about to give her my info but she cut me off with another glare that made me reconsider my previous statement.  “I will know everything I need to by the appointed time, Mr. Chamberlain,” she warned.

Vriska clamped onto my arm and squeezed hard.  “We have an appointment to keep Neville,” she hissed in my ear, and dragged me off as fast as she could.  I briefly considered asking her if she was afraid of the gorgeous devilgirl, but a look into her eyes told me that that would not be a useful avenue of questioning.

But you know what?  _Fuck it._   I am going on my first real legitimate date tonight!  I could sing [“Onna no Ko Otoko no Ko”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOh50KYOEeQ) by Yuko Ogura if I knew Japanese.

 

A few of the warehouses on the fringe of the warehouse district had been converted into apartments, just the sort of thing that attracts artistic types with a lot of vision and very little income.  Sollux captor lived on the third floor of such a building, his room only accessible by fire escape.  Even here, a pattern of card suits decorated the iron railings, proof that the city planners would meld form and function whenever possible.

What had once been a French window had been replaced with a crude door made of various bits of welded-together scrap metal.  The left half of this barrier was made of three big pieces of shiny new metal, and the right half was composed only of stained or oxidized scraps cut into squares, making a sort of beautifully ugly mosaic of rust and verdigris and whatever the blue stuff is called.  Right on the seam, a mechanical eye peered at us.  I don’t mean a camera lens, or rather I do, but a camera lens that had been built to look exactly like a creepy, huge, cyberpunk eyeball.  “Stand back from the door,” a voice commanded.  It had a slight lisp. 

“We’re entertaining some ladies!” another, similar voice declared.

“Shut the fuck up Tuna and stop telling clients our personal business,” the first voice snapped.  A feminine voice could be heard shouting in the background.  Only a few words were intelligible, like “booyeah!” and “make you my bitch!”

Vriska and I exchanged a glance as the sounds of evil laughter, loud banging, and sirens emanated from the apartment.  “I am really uncomfortable here,” I said.

Vriska just nodded, her face equal parts fascinated and horrified.

Finally the door hissed open, and out stepped a _very attractive_ teen girl with 60s model hair, dyed brilliant pink.  She beamed at me; it was a radiant smile, though it seemed to take a lot out of her as she chose that moment to stumble and almost crash into me.  Thankfully her troll caught her arm just in time to prevent any animesque accidental fondling shenanigans; the only consequence was a very unsexy mutual headbutt.  “Sorry to keep you waiting shorty,” she said as she staggered to a standing posture as I narrowly kept myself from falling off the fire escape, with a half-hearted, nigh-on forced sleeve grab from Vriska.  “We were having way too much fun in there,” the girl added, ignoring my plight with a dramatic wink of a big, pink eye.  Now, her eyes were a little bloodshot and she smelled like alcohol, but I’m talking about her irises: they were a bombastic shade of pink.  I had no clue what to make of her.

“So very sorry,” said the troll.  She was a cute, petite thing with spiral horns and silver hair.  I couldn’t tell what model she was, maybe custom or maybe, judging by her slight accent, just foreign.  “I’ll get her out of your hair in just a mome—oh _dear_.”  The ‘dear’ was said with such a heartbreaking inflection that I almost didn’t mind the human girl puking up a frankly heroic amount of sparkling rosé wine and amaretto flavored with stomach acid and thankfully nothing else, _all over me_.  It hit me square in the chest and the stream moved down my body systematically, soaking my pants.  The last pathetic dribbles, mixed with a few pathetic breakfast noodles, were coughed out onto my shoes.

Vriska looked on in horror.  The chubby little troll flushed luminescent green in embarrassment.  The girl, on her knees, continued to dry-heave.  “Neville,” said Vriska, “ _we need to fight them._ ”

The other troll cried.

 

Sollux was a gangly man, his hair was black and blonde, and he had one of those faces where you can’t tell if he’s unbearably ugly or incredibly handsome.   He looked at me in disgust as the party of four tromped into his living room.  “I’LL WASH IT,” screamed a stuttering, lisping voice.  A troll who resembled his master except for his glowing eyes, unruly mop of hair, and crooked mouthful of fangs, jogged up to me and started pulling off my suit.  “YOU’RE FUCKING GROSS MAN,” he slurred.

“Dammit Roxy, I don’t need you puking on my customers,” said Sollux, clutching at his head.

Roxy—the girl I’m assuming—was passed out and snoring like a chainsaw in the arms of her troll.

“Shower’s down the hall,” Sollux said irritatedly, the mere act of pointing looking like some German impressionist film villain’s rise from the grave.  “I’ll work on Vriska while you’re gone.”  I shot Vriska a look and she grinned, nodding enthusiastically.  I sighed and walked on down, avoiding various computer parts and weird little machines that were haphazardly strewn about the floor, a task made harder by Sollux’s troll, Mituna, who was still eagerly tugging at my jacket.

I reached the bathroom without stepping in something or electrocuting myself, miraculously, and undressed behind the door before handing the troll my things.  Then I stepped into the shower, turned on the hot water, and—

Stared right into the barrel of an assault rifle.  I slumped against the opposite wall, glad for the additional half-inch of distance, and looked around in a panic.  The weapon was…melting through the wall.

“Oh yeah,” I heard Sollux shouting, “me and Rx created a little artificial intelligence thing during our hack-off.  On accident.  Don’t worry, he’s harmless, restricted to the apartment.  And, like, a lousy shot.”  _None of that_ was reassuring.

 

I washed up quickly and basically said to hell with everything when he started shooting at me.  The illusory bullets didn’t even cause me physical discomfort but they were just as realistic as any other hologram made by the AR.  I threw on a bathrobe to the * _ratatatat_ * of an AK-47 and marched back into the hall. 

It’s really awkward being in someone else’s house, in one of their bathrobes, because their girlfriend threw up all over your new suit.

Mituna’s voice startled me again.  “NOT DONE—”

“USE YOUR INSIDE VOICE!” Sollux growled, pounding his fist and making something rattle.

Mituna whispered very loudly.  “Not done yet.”

Roxy was asleep on the couch, drooling into her pillow while her troll stroked her back.  She looked up at me and turned green with shame again, eyes turning watery, and I melted a little.  “Hi,” I said.  “Neville Chamberlain.”

“Calliope,” she muttered.  “My dear master is named Roxy Lalonde.”

I felt a little throb all through my body.  “Um.  I think I might be going on a date with her sister later.”

Calliope shrank; her ears, slightly pointed and calf-like, drooped just slightly.  “I’m so sorry for you,” she muttered.  What?

“No,” I stammered, “I actually like her.”

“Then hopefully,” she said with a slight smile, the kind that begins forced but ends as a self-sustaining expression of hope, “things may yet work out for the best!”

“Neville!” Vriska called from the other end of the room, “Come over here and keep me company!”

The “living room” was more of a big studio type of deal, and the far end was normally set aside with a heavy curtain.  At the moment it only concealed about a fourth of a small workshop crammed with even more computer parts, machine parts, enough prosthetics matching Vriska’s to build a whole new troll, and so many colorful troll weapons that it looked like a giant child’s overturned toy chest.

Vriska’s mechanical hand was up on a work-bench.  The single metal plate over the inside of her forearm had been removed and the insides had been partially disassembled, wires and steel cable splayed carefully onto the workspace.  There were a few twisted bars that Sollux had snipped off the sides to make room for… _something_ , a metal ring with a transparent dome over it.  Our dice were inside.  “Almost done,” he said.  “I never liked the dicekind specibus; they’re too easy to lose, especially when you have so many.  This way you’ll be able to use them way faster and won’t have to worry about picking them up.  It’ll be easier to game the system too.  Also, I’m going to increase the strength of her arm so the added weight doesn’t throw her off.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Shut up Neville,” said Vriska, “this is awesome.  I am _popomatic._ ”

“You’re an idiot,” I said, or rather, that’s what I was going to say, before I saw the _most fantastic thing_.  Sollux had a set of powered armor up against the wall, black and yellow, with a visor split between blue and red.  The heavy yellow gauntlets each held a metallic black chakram with red and blue LED lights along the inside.  “This is awesome!  Who are you building this for?”

“It’s mine,” Sollux snorted.  “I modded Mituna up until he could wear powered armor like a Sagittarius model to counteract that stupid “squishy wizard” bullshit all Geminis have.”

“Sweet,” I said, not quite touching the thing.  “So you rely on your psionics?”

Sollux gagged.  “That skill tree is bullshit, you only get the good moves at super high levels.  I burnt that out pushing his energy attacks past max,” he pointed at me with his screwdriver, grinning like a kid gushing about his favorite toy.  “Tuna can actually _generate_ heat now, that’s how badass it is.  If I went full power I could actually hurt someone.”

Mituna peered around the corner, as if trying to be non-intrusive, and then shouted.  “YO SOLLUX, WHAT’S THE RULE ABOUT BLEACH AND COLORS?  YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO USE LIKE, HELLA BLEACH RIGHT?”  I felt as if I had been thrown out of a plane and all the blood flowed into my feet.

Sollux sighed.  “You’re not supposed to use _any_.”

“Okay cool!” Mituna said with a happy smile before skipping off.  My heart started beating again.

“Yeah…I wasn’t the best at modding back then,” Sollux said, raising his shoulders defensively.  “He used to be…different.”  His face fell and something approaching guilt darkened his features.  Then, Sollux abruptly cleared his throat.  “Modding is serious business kid, always use a pro, like me.”

 

When my clothes eventually emerged from the wash, I was relieved to see that they were actually clean, and not ruined in any detectable way.  My luck is finally on the rise.  We left with gratitude and a polite nod towards the sleeping Roxy.

“We need to get into a fight with some dude,” said Vriska.  The new panel in her arm opened up and out popped the popomatic dome, which she proceeded to pop mercilessly.  “How about…” she scanned the crowd, “that guy!”  She thrust her finger at some vaguely hipsterish Aquarius troll that had had the gall to cross the street near us.

I grabbed her hand and lowered it.  “Monkeys point.”

“Monkeys bite people’s faces off,” Vriska countered, baring her fangs at the other troll.  He promptly ran away.

“Let’s just go home so I can get ready, we can fight someone tomorrow,” I groaned.

“I’m coming with you,” Vriska said matter-of-factly.

I stumbled and nearly fell.  “You really aren’t,” I said.

“Yup,” she said, sounding as if she were correcting someone stupid, “I don’t like or trust that girl.  She’s probably going to try to get revenge on you for having the audacity to survive a chainsaw attack.”

 

Obviously I was powerless to stop Vriska from coming with me.  Mom caught me walking in with a brand new suit and instantly asked, “Neville, are you going on a date in that little getup?”

I sighed.  “No point in denying it.”

Mom squealed.  “Oh I’m so excited!  When are you going to pick up Jade?”

My face felt really hot at that moment and my brain felt incredibly stupid.  “No,” I said feebly.

“Not Jade then?” she said, sounding more than a little disappointed.  “She would be such a great daughter in law.”  I am thirteen and my mother is guilting me about marriage _what is this?_   Next she’d be going on about grandchildren.

“You would have had such beautiful grandchildren,” she sniffed, sounding as if she were about to cry.

“Okay no you’re not allowed to be sadder about that relationship not happening than I was that is against the rules,” I remonstrated, voice shaking a little.

My mom was about to say something else, but mercifully someone knocked on the door.  It was Rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes this fic lives! It has been entirely too long *kisses the fic*. Neville, so you know, has not been resting all this time, but guest starring in one of my original works.  
> I promise, the next few chapters will actually be interesting. There will be tournaments, and awkward dates, and a dating sim. Start thinking about what pairing you think would work best for this story because soon, you get to decide what's canon.  
> Kanaya apologizes for taking nine months to land that blow.  
> This chapter was originally going to be longer but I wanted to just fucking update already, so I cut it off arbitrarily right there. Hope you enjoyed.  
> ALSO, mad props to Neodarklight, who basically wrote this chapter for me in the comments of the previous chapter.


	15. Passive Aggressive Kombat!

Rose was wearing this…like… _pleasant_ clothing.  She had on a puffy, hot pink jacket and blue mittens and a cute little skirt over thick black tights, purple boots and _fluffy pink earmuffs with kittens on them_ _like gahhh_ and she had the sweetest smile on her face.  Kanaya was standing behind her looking more than presentable, and I quickly glanced over at Vriska, still in jeans and a t-shirt smeared slightly with oil.  “May we come in?” Rose asked politely.  I sort of just stared awkwardly, and a stupid teen-boy grin may or may not have crept across my face.

“Of course you may,” said my mom, her usual cheeriness somewhat restored.  “Neville get out of the way and let me see your date.”

Rose and Kanaya stepped into the living room and introduced themselves with a polite nod, halfway to a bow, and mom looked at them appraisingly.  “Such a pretty girl,” said my mom, “and a very elegant troll!” her smile was radiant.  She took a slightly canting pose, one hand on her hip and the other on the kitchen counter, “So, what are your intentions with my darling little boy, Ms. Lalonde?”

Rose smiled pleasantly and shrugged a little.  “I suppose I will need him to guide me to some suitably romantic spot, he being a city native and a gentleman.”  It was weird, this Rose was so different from the one I fought at the mall; not even a _hint_ of malevolence was observable.

Mom let out another twinkly laugh.  “Well, he’s a city native certainly,” she said with a wink.  Mom looked at me.  “You should take her to Flushed Park, there’s a little carnival there for the weekend, it’ll be fun!”  She turned back to Rose and added, “have him back by, ooh, eleven, okay, dear?”

Rose nodded deeply once again.  “Of course, Ms. Chamberlain.”

 

“So uh,” I whispered, “you’re not mad?” as the door shut behind us.  The moon was out tonight, bright for its small size.  An occasional flurry of snow could be seen to fall in the distance, but not around us.  It wasn’t really cloudy enough for anything else.

Her expression did not visibly change but there was a palpable change in the atmosphere now, like pressure building up before a storm.  I noticed that Kanaya had a small white wad of bandages secured to her face; the slightest hint of emerald green blood had wept through the gauze.  “One day,” said Rose, reaching out to stroke Kanaya’s hand, “you will be held accountable for what you’ve done to me and mine.”  And then, in a flash, she was right in front of me, and even though she was tiny, she seemed to loom over me, and for the first time I stopped thinking about how pretty she was.  “It will be beautiful,” she hissed.  Then, composure reasserted itself, and she was the sweet, pleasant Rose from inside the house.  “But until that time, I think we should just enjoy ourselves and each other’s company.” 

She stroked my throat as she walked away, using a single finger, as if dragging a knife across it.  Her walk, I noticed, was slightly slinky.

“What the shit were you doing?” I asked Vriska as I set off after her, clearly _not_ the one who was going to be leading anyone anywhere.

“Having a chat with Kanaya,” she said nonchalantly.  “I was watching the whole time!  I would’ve been there in a second if anything actually happened.”

I blew an extravagant raspberry.  “You just have a thing for her I bet.”  She punched me with her metal arm and I almost fell over.

 

Flushed Park, unlike Ashen, was cartoonishly vibrant.  The main gate was a huge, extravagant thing made from thin bars of bright red metal that twisted and curved like sinews and bones into hearts—hearts hearts _hearts_ , _every-damn-where_ in this park _—_ until it looked creepily like the ribcage of a very romantic animal.  A massive, gothic heart formed of several interlocking hearts topped the monstrosity, and through it could be seen and heard the pounding lights and flashing sounds of a carnival, which looked right at home in this of all the four parks. 

Stepping through, the temperature shifted just slightly, becoming just tolerably warmer.  There was some temperature regulation here, created by a system of special hybrid plants that generated heat.  Flushed Park was a land of eternal springtime; it forced cutesy joy down your throat and unhappiness was high treason within its walls.  Every tree and flower and blade of grass was either exotic, or some special, genetically modified troll-plant.  Nothing was green here; the leaves of trees were little purple hearts and the grass was blue and pink.  To the left of the main gate, the grass was organized into alternating squares of the blue and pink; to the right, pink dominated, though swirls of blue and purple shot through it, twisting into shapes like waves and winds, themselves twisting into hearts.  And when I said troll-plant, by the way, I meant that there were in fact several trees with a head and arms.  It was a type of android called a treant, much calmer and more methodical than a troll, used for a variety of tasks that more mobile androids would have no patience for.  Today, these were handing out balloons to passing couples.  The one at the entrance gave us one each as we passed, its eyes glowing like the candle in a jack-o’-lantern; I got a purple arrow and Rose a red heart with a hollow in the center.  I awkwardly tried to nonchalantly stick the arrow in there for cuteness sake.  A raised, irritated eyebrow told me that she knew what I was about and exactly what she thought of it.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat.  “Where are you from?”  The lights of the carnival beat like drums in the distance, but we still had a ways to go; the path twisted and curved with the land, all hills and monolithic stones where it wasn’t groves of colorful trees, and the lighting, from Victorian gaslamp-style lampposts, was dim and “romantic”.  Kanaya, glowing white behind us, was much brighter, and cast an eerie pall on anything nearby.  Her wings, mothlike when we first met, had distended into pale white lengths of gossamer shaped like dragonfly wings streaming behind her; Virgos’ wings were incredibly malleable and could be colored through the AR, and could even be used as emergency weapons in a troll battle.  She and Vriska were still engrossed in conversation, speaking in tones too low for human ears.

“The great and terrible city of Manchester, Massachusetts,” Rose said, after a time.

“Ah.” Another moment passed.  Vriska snickered.  “So what’s that like?”

“It can be a rough place to live,” Rose said with a vague tone of voice that told me nothing of value.  She turned to the side of the path (made of grey, red, and purple bricks) and looked at a flower bush.  Even though the leaves were green, it must have been one of the freak plants, because each bud was a mass of pitch black tendrils and a dangling little leathery pod that looked like nothing less than a bat, sleeping for the night.  It was so dark a black, that even Kanaya’s light didn’t cast enough illumination on it to be clearly visible.

Rose smiled and cradled one of the hideous things and I cringed slightly.  “Bat flowers,” she said.  “These must have been altered to live in colder environments, but otherwise they are the same variety that my mother has in the greenhouse.”

I almost said something stupid like “you have a _mother?_ ” but instead I asked something stupid like “those are _real?_ ”

“Greenhouses?” she said wryly.  I opened my mouth and sputtered the beginnings of some kind of snarky comeback, but then she smiled and offered a slight chuckle.  “Yes, Neville, bat flowers are an actual plant that grows in actuality, and actually resembles the sleeping form of a chiroptera.”  She plucked the blossom from the bush and fit it through a buttonhole in my jacket collar.  I felt my face heat up a little.  _That_ is what it’s like to get flowers.  Huh.

 

If you can’t see why people prefer Ashen Park to this colorful mess, then you’re probably the kind of person that can eat an entire triple-chocolate cake in one sitting.

 

[We finally arrived at the carnival,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe4NYtELlGg) a cozy and clean affair with the correct number of clowns; another form of android that resembled a living cartoon character, about the only non-threatening shape a clown can take.  The music pounded, and invisible voices lent a fun atmosphere, though just unsettling enough to get you on edge and make you jump at sudden stimuli, ready to fight the carnival itself.  In the outside world, I hear, carnivals tend to be pretty awful, unless you want tetanus, in which case they are wonderful, but here in Alternia everything was shiny and new and pretty.  AR displays lit up the night, lights twisting into impossible shapes and combinations of colors, like artworks and dreamscapes.  Bursts of sparkles formed in the air, making little will-o-the-wisps to follow people around and make just the correct amount of nuisance. 

“Go win me something,” Rose said, pointing to a game stall, the old “knock the bottles over to get your girl a stuffed thing” game.  I hoped the game would not be as rigged as they tend to be in the rest of the world.  The clown operating it was a small, skinny fellow, with fluffy green hair and little diamond teardrops under his eyes, giving him a slightly glazed expression on his cute, cartoon face.  “You’re not going to try to cheat me are you?” I asked.

“What does that mean sir?” he asked, tilting his head like a puppy.  “All you have to do is knock them over.  I don’t see how I could possibly be facetious in this game, even if I wanted to.”

“The bottles could be glued together,” said Vriska, striding up to the counter with a predatory air, “or filled with sand, or maybe some kind of transparent substance.”  She put her hands on the counter and leaned closer, squinting over the clown’s shoulder.  “They look like plastic, but they could actually be made of thick glass.  It could also be a solid piece, you could be using perspective tricks to make them seem closer or farther than they are to throw off his aim, the balls might be way lighter than they seem.  Maybe they’re being held in place with magnets…or mayyyyyyyybe they’re just AR projections or even really nice paintings!”  She leered at the clown as if she were about to eat him.  “There’s a million ways I could cheat this if I were you.”

“If you were me,” said the clown, ignoring the menace exuding off my troll, “you would live only to entertain and such thoughts would never enter into your head!”

Vriska bared her fangs at him.  “Are you some kind of early Disney protagonist or something, Mr. Incorruptible Pure Pureness, the White Prince of Lamery?”

“Vriska,” I said placatingly, “you and Kanaya go and ride something.  I’ll holler if I need you.”

She looked excited for just a moment, but then a controlled stillness asserted itself on her face, like a dog that has been too well trained to bark but really, _really_ needs to.  “Are you sure about that Neville?”  She narrowed her eyes at Rose’s direction; the seven pupils in her left eye focused on a single point.

“Positive,” I said.  Whispering, I added, “I could totally take her.”

“So you think,” Rose called.  She had seemed to have gotten bored with the exchange and somehow produced a pair of knitting needles; she was working on something small and pink.  “Go on Kanaya, have a pleasant date of your own.”

Kanaya startled, her wings stiffening and becoming brown and craggy like bark, before softening to black and green silk.  “Come along,” she said, extending her hand, a green flush shining out through her translucent skin, “I have not eaten today, have you?”

“No,” Vriska muttered as her own hand slipped into Kanaya’s, “let’s go get something fattening.”  And with that, they slipped away into the crowd.  I suddenly felt lonely.

I sighed and turned back to the clown, determination bubbling like a shaken Coca Cola. "Gimme three balls,” I said as coolly as I could, as I snapped a colorful coin onto the counter.  Rose giggled.

I missed the first shot.

With my second I hit one of the edge bottles, and it moved slightly.

My third managed to hit the same bottle, and the entire pyramid lurched once, as if deciding whether to fall or not, before deciding “eh fuck it” and collapsing like a dead man.

The clown whooped and leapt into the air, doing a backflip and,  at the apex of his jump, clapping his feet three times before a perfect one-point landing.  “Congratulations!” he declaimed, like a statesman awarding an honor combined with the pride of a parent, “you get your choice of any of these prizes!” He pointed to a set of a dozen stuffed animals all hanging from the rafters of his little stall by tiny hooks.  They were all some kind of mythological creature; a gryphon, a unicorn, a manticore, etc.  I almost went with the pretty pink Minotaur, but something else caught my eye at the last second; an emerald green beast with black button eyes, shaped like a little man with the head of an octopus and the wings of a dragon.  At the top of his head was a beachball colored propeller hat, and there was a slingshot in the back pocket of his overalls.  I knew Rose had to have it.  “Gimme the little horroterror thing there,” I said.

As soon as the plush monstrosity was in my hand, it was gone.  Rose, suddenly there, slipped her arm through mine, and looked up at me with a smile.  Kid Cthulhu was cradled in her opposite arm.  “You certainly know how to win a lady over,” she said.

“With trial by combat, right?” I asked.

She poked me with her elbow and told me to buy her something fattening.

 

We had a pleasant time and ended the night with our trolls, all riding a big spinning contraption together.  At the apex of the spin, I could see clear away to Ashen Ferris, and my heart sank a little; it made me think of Jade.  I was so pulled out of the moment that it opened up a floodgate of memories.  There was no clear progression, just, in the time it took to make another revolution, I thought of everything that happened between now and my birthday.  At the bottom of the spin, I thought of the warehouse on 4th and 13th.  For a second there, I thought I saw an anomaly in the crowd, if only for a second or two.  It looked like one of the clowns just didn’t belong, like there was a smug grin amid the saintly whitefaces peddling swelled corn and singing to the calliope, a grin splattered with a rainbow of colors, crowned by a shaggy black mane and a pair of horns.  But…that guy wasn’t real.  And neither was his master.

I forgot about it by the time we got off, and now, looking back, I think it might have not even happened at all.

As close to drunk as I’d ever been thanks to the spinning, I decided that we needed to race back to the edge of the park.  “Kids versus trolls, go!”

“That’s stupid,” said Vriska.  She looked at Kanaya, still clinging to her arm, and awkwardly disconnected.  “Trolls and their humans shouldn’t compete against each other,” she said, in a know-it-all kinda voice.  I stuck my tongue out at her and, grabbing Rose’s hand, ran off into the trees. 

It was incredibly stupid.  The path was so twisty, the ground outside it was so uneven and thick with roots, I could easily have broken my neck in this darkness, or smashed my nose into one of the monoliths[1].  Thankfully, I didn’t.  When I tripped and _nearly_ broke my neck, Rose clung to a tree with one hand and, growling, pulled me back up to my feet before I hit something.

“Don’t be so reckless,” she said.  Her face became pensive, and she scratched her chin.  “Let me be reckless instead.”  And with that, she stood up on her tiptoes and gave me a kiss, just a little peck on the lips, so soft it was barely there, and so strong it nearly killed me.

 

We had our arms linked all the way back home, but disengaged right before actually going inside.  I mean _come on_ , my mom was in there.

She was sitting in the living room, waiting for us, with a strange expression on her face.  I would have said it was coldness, but that was impossible.  My mother couldn’t be cold even with someone she hated.

“Hello Mrs. Chamberlain,” said Rose as she took off her jacket and hung it on the coat rack; underneath was a diamond-pattered pink and purple sweater-vest over a lilac blouse, and looked as pleasant as pleasant could be.  “I brought him back just as promised.”

“Sit down,” Mom said after a second, mouth slightly flat.  “I’ll get us some refreshments.”  What?

“I’ll be glad to Mrs. Chamberlain,” said Rose as she primly took a seat across from me.  She gave me another little smile.

Kanaya and Vriska moved to the back of the room, behind Rose.  It was pretty obvious that Vriska was smitten with the Virgo by now, but she was still in the best position to protect me.

Just as she finished, my mom came back with a tray of tea and blueberry macarons.  Oh shit, she’d gotten _fancy._   Clearly something ominous was afoot.

“So you’re Neville’s new love interest,” she said politely as she poured Rose a cup.  “Or so I’m assuming.  I mean who knows, you might end up dumping him.  Milk or lemon?”  A chill ran up my spine.  What the _Hell_ did my mom just say?  Had she actually just been… _rude?_

“Neither,” said Rose, furrowing her brow, “just a few drops of honey.”

 “Ooooh, a purist,” my mom purred.

“And I suppose I am,” Rose added, taking a sip of tea.  She cleared her throat before speaking again.  “And I’m afraid that was somewhat rude, Mrs. Chamberlain.”

 “I’m afraid it was,” said my mom, with a little smile that said “oops, you got me!” “You know,” she said, easily steering the topic like a master oarsman, “I’ve heard your name before! I couldn’t remember where because it had been so long, but then I started thinking about it while you two were gone.  Then it hit me!  That name, combined with your eyes and complexion…your mother couldn’t possibly be,” she cleared her throat, suppressing a slight chuckle, “ _Rosalynn Maléfice_ now could she?”

My eyes popped wide open.  I thought about it; Rose really did look like picture in the back of my copy of _Complacency of the Learned,_ right above the “about the author” segment that mentioned something about a “great and terrible city” _._ I just hadn’t put it together because that hugely dense book gave me migraines while I was reading and night terrors while I wasn’t, so I never really _finished_ it per se.  What’s more, the name on the cover said “Rosalynn Maléfice”, not “Lalonde”, but now that I think of it that’s clearly just a pen name.  “Your mom is really the author of that…literary experience?” I asked, for lack of a better word.  Rose squirmed just a little, clearly uncomfortable now.

“Yes,” she muttered into her tea, a slight pink flush blooming on her cheekbones.  “I try not make a big deal out of it.”

“Well,” said mom, with a hint of coldness so subtle I probably imagined it, “I hope you don’t mind if I pass something along.”  She stood up and walked towards the stairs.  “Just give me a minute,” she chirped, “I’ll be right there with you!” and she walked upstairs, half running and half prancing.

“Neville,” Rose said, a shadow casting itself over her gaze, “answer this truthfully.  What is your mother’s first name?”

That was certainly out of the blue.  I had to think about it.  Of course I knew it, but my mom is such a motherly mom that it never enters into my head to think of her as someone who isn’t someone’s mom.  “Umm,” I said, the name on the tip of my tongue.

Vriska smacked the top of my head and mussed my hair.  “ _Ashley_ ,” she hissed with a roll of her eyes.  “Honestly you are just the dumbest—”

Rose dropped her teacup, and deep red tea welled out onto the floor like freshly spilled blood.   “And your father?” she added in a harsh whisper.  She was breathing _hard._

“Theodore,” I said, narrowing my eyes.  My dad’s name, unlike my mom’s, is plastered all over a bunch of posters and ending credits everywhere, being more than a little famous.  “Though he goes by Ted as his stage name.  What’s the deal?”

Rose stood up, stumbling a little; Kanaya immediately sprang to her feet and gently took Rose’s arm, one hand stroking the inside of her elbow.  “I’m sorry Neville but we have to go no—”

My mom walked down the stairs holding a small package wrapped in red paper, bound with string.  “Your mother and I used to know each other,” she sighed, voice full of nostalgia and just the tiniest hint of hostility.  Then she laughed a little twinkly laugh.  “You seem like such a smart girl, you probably gathered as much!”  Mom handed Rose the package and she took it, looking haggard.  “This belonged to her a long time ago, and I want to return it, with my apologies.”  Then, in a lower voice, she added, “the Chamberlains send their regards!”

Rose took it and walked toward the door.  Her gait was exactly like the monster in a German impressionist horror movie.  Or the victim.  Kanaya followed her like a shadow, her hand sliping out of Vriska’s like a silk handkerchief falling to the floor.  Rose seemed to have forgotten her coat, and the troll held it for her, dutifully remaining silent to save some face.  “Goodbye Neville,” she said, not looking at me, “I’ll see you at the tournament.”  As she left Rose’s hand squeezed the Kid Cthulhu so hard that her knuckles turned white, but the other hand cradled the package as delicately as if it were porcelain.

“Come again soon!” Mom said with a friendly wave.

 

[1] Instead of eldritch runes, they have hearts carved into them, before you ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Passive Aggressive Kombat! Round One: FIGHT!  
> What the hell happened here, you may ask? Well, I suppose we will find out. In fact, YOU might be able to submit it! I know what’s in the box, canonically speaking, but I will never reveal it! However if a fan were to suggest a worthy substitute, then go on ahead and I’ll throw it in :P  
> Man, I have not had so much fun writing a chapter with this fic since…the introduction of Jadebot *evil laughter*.  
> The nice clown, by the way, is Whistles, from The Starlight Calliope. He is awesome. Andrew Hussie signed my copy of the book last year. He is also awesome.  
> Incidentally, since Ash’s mom is the established visual headcanon for Neville’s mom, I decided to complete the reference circuit here. I must once again remind you that Neville’s dad is an actor, and that we haven’t met him yet.  
> Rose and Roxy’s mom, “Rosalynn Maléfice”, is an amalgam of both Mom Lalondes from canon. What should her real first name be? Bear in mind that I’m just throwing you guys bones to play with while I get on with my machinations and plots.  
> First time I ever write Kanaya/Vriska, and I didn’t even intend to. Huh.


End file.
